I have yet to see Meryl Streep’s movie The Iron Lady, but I noticed a poster as I was walking Lucy (Level343′s official mascot!) this morning. “Never Compromise” jumped out of the poster at me. Isn’t that the truth; it’s something I’ve been struggling with for the past year as I continue to run and grow my business.

I can honestly say I enjoy working with people who stand by their convictions. I enjoy working with people who never compromise their business or personal ethics – no, not even for money. Some may find it hard to believe there are still people like that, but there are.

How can you run a business without walking a fine line of compromise? Especially when that business is online in B2B services and you’re aiming for long term clients?

Case in point: look at what’s happening with search. In April alone, there were 52 highlights to Google’s latest algorithm changes. That in itself has given way to a plethora of news feeds regarding all the compromises businesses have made in order to rank for their keywords.

We have warnings to tighten the reins on questionable SEO methods going out in light of the latest updates, such as this one from Search Engine Land, written by Kerry Dean of PMG:

“If you are managing SEO and link building for a big brand, I recommend ceasing all paid link building campaigns. I’m sure I’ll take some heat for that recommendation, but I just can’t recommend paid link building to big brands right now. It’s just too risky at this point in time.”

Businesses have to be warned to pull it in? Maybe it’s not exactly “bad business practices” so much as it is “bad ranking practices”, but why does there need to be a warning at all?

How Much Are You Willing to Bend for Success?

Level343 is kind of a strange cat when it comes to our industry peers. Our new headquarters are in San Francisco. We have a satellite office in Kansas City. We have less than ten full time employees, one full time doggy mascot and have yet to find an actual office in San Fran. Though small, we’re an international marketing company; I speak five languages fluently, and have partners in every corner of the world.

We could be bigger.

We could have more people on staff.

We could have satellite offices in other parts of the world instead of business partners.

We could be a lot of things we’re not.

But –

I’m not willing to bend. I’m not willing to cut corners. Although I’ve sometimes walked the line, I don’t believe I’ve ever crossed it. My team feels the same way.

No Comment

It’s cost us some potential clients. We’ve had potentials come to us who wanted us to do (choose your questionable technique here). We turned them down with a “We’re sorry. We don’t do that, here. We can (insert other technique), however, and here’s why.” Sometimes, offering a viable replacement keeps them with us. Sometimes it doesn’t.

It’s cost us some potentially excellent team members. We’ve been accused of “doing too much” or “giving too much” by previous partners on jobs. We’ve been accused of being too fussy with the work we provide our clients. We’ve been laughed at for tweaking our reporting because 1) Jahnelle’s a data freak and loves Excel sheets and 2) we want to give actionable reports. We want the client to see, in one report (and preferably one page), what’s happening with their web presence.

These things are important to us, because our clients’ online successes often depend on them.

Square Peg in a Round Hole? Maybe…

Sometimes I feel like a square peg in a round hole. It’s not like staying on the “up and up” comes natural. CYA is born into everyone. But see, that’s what makes us different from the animals – the fact that we have a choice to do, or not.

It’s hard sticking to our guns sometimes, especially when money is tight and a potential walks up with a questionable 10k/month project. On the rare occasion that we aren’t quite as meticulous with our accounts receivables as we should be and a client decides they don’t have to pay for delivered work  – well, it’s hard not to go hacker ninja on them and drop their site into the shredders. Maybe 301 some porn wheels their way and other not-quite-proper actions to “help” them rank for triple X terms.

Point is, even though our actions may not be the gut reaction variety – even though the ethical thought is the second thought -, we haven’t compromised.

Pandas, Penguins… Poodles…?

I may regret saying this, but – we’ve watched the Google updates pass, and rode them out with little difficulty. We’ve babysat our clients’ sites and patted their URLs as the traffic meandered in much like it did before the updates. Although the updates have brought us new clients looking for help to fix their crashing traffic, they’ve yet to lose us a client to someone else.

The Rise Of The Penguins

I think – and feel free to chime in on this – we’ve ridden these things out because we’ve never compromised. We’ve never compromised on our link building practices, choosing viral and organic above paid linking strategies. We’ve never compromised on content development, choosing high quality articles over spun or $1 per 2,000 word articles. We’ve never compromised where it comes to proudly displaying our clients’ brands, choosing to make sure everything we do in their name provides a positive example.

Have You Compromised?

Many business owners are staring at their analytics and traffic data right now. Many are watching their rank drop and wondering what to do. Some of the less informed may actually be wondering what happened. What may have happened is too much compromise.

Because, let’s face facts: when Google’s Penguin update creates mass unemployment in India because people have been paying for cheap labor and cheaper tactics rather than actually doing the work necessary for long lasting results….

Then a lot of businesses have compromised…

You’ve spent thousands of dollars on professional landing pages: professional design; professional copy; professional images. The pages drip professionalism and you’ve watched more dollar signs float out of your wallet than a bird has feathers. According to that fast talking sales person, people should be throwing money at you by now.

Landing Page ROI

You feverishly check your merchant account for the fiftieth time in the last week. It’s empty; the promised “landing page ROI” just isn’t happening. Either people have forgotten your site existed or your landing pages are bombing worse than Bouncing Betties ever did.

Welcome to Landing Page ROI 101. In this article:

• Landing Pages vs. Preferred Landing Pages (PLPs)
• Traffic Check 101
• Are Your Preferred Landing Pages Blocking Traffic?
• Your Preferred Landing Page Checklist
• Secrets of Strong Conversion
• Testing, Testing, Is This Thing Converting?

Read on, oh information seeker!

People often get confused by the term landing pages. They assume this means a special type of page. Instead, a landing page is just any page a visitor lands on. For example, if a visitor has landed on your contact page first, your contact page is a landing page.

A preferred landing page, however, really is a special type of page. Pages designated as PLPs are the ones you’d ultimately like your visitors to come to. You want them to see these pages first, before anything else. They’re generally set up as sales pages, with direct calls to action and so on. These distinctions are important, and we’re going to use them for the rest of the article, so don’t forget!

Traffic Check 101

It’s easy to think, “I’m not getting customers so my landing pages must be bad.” It’s easy to jump the gun and start changing everything in an attempt to get something – anything – to happen.

Well, we’re not “throw a noodle at the wall to see if it sticks” type professionals. We’re “systematic research and strategic approach” type professionals. The first thing is to look at what your traffic data has to say, because it does no good to change pages if visitors aren’t reaching your pages in the first place.

Server Stats

Server Stats

Most servers have some kind of traffic tracker available. Don’t worry; you don’t have to delve into the data. What you do need to do is see if something has changed in your reported traffic.

In the image to the left, for example, there’s a noticeable drop in traffic for February and March of this year. This probably means something happened with this site’s web presence rather than with its landing pages specifically.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Your server stats and GA stats aren’t ever going to measure up exactly. We aren’t looking at numbers at this point, however, so that’s okay. We’re looking at peaks and valleys.

When comparing stats from different programs, it’s important to pay attention. What appears an obvious drop in the site stats is barely a dip in Google Analytics. Having said that, GA is actually showing a peak of 1,000+ visitors in March before dropping back down in April (May has just started, so it makes it looks like a huge drop – don’t freak out if you see this in your stats).

What you’re looking for are noticeable drops in traffic, indicating an issue with your site’s online visibility (i.e. ranking, publicity, engagement, etc.). If your traffic is maintaining a steady flow, you can (somewhat safely) assume there’s something wrong with your pages. Let’s go look!

Are Your Preferred Landing Pages Blocking Traffic?

Now, if you performed some due diligence, you should have marked in your analytics when you made changes to your landing pages. You can do this in Google Analytics by adding annotations. Once you have at least a roundabout idea of when you installed those landing pages (or the updates), here are a few things you can do:

• Compare pre- and post-installation information. These are simple metrics, but they give you a good idea of trouble areas.
  • Are you getting more/less traffic to these pages?
  • Is the bounce rate noticeably higher than pre-install?
  • Has the time on page changed?
• Compare pre- and post-installation traffic per PLP.
  • Where is the most traffic coming from (referral, direct, search)?
  • Have any search terms changed (include “not provided” and “not set” information)?
  • Has referral traffic changed (more/less than usual)?

What you’re looking for:

What Are You Looking For

It’s not easy troubleshooting by cookie cutter, but what you’re looking for is something that stands out. Optimization is 75% training, 10% trail/error, 10% instinct and 5% fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be so many kinds of SEOs. For example, you might see:

• A 14% drop in organic traffic, which could mean things like:
  • Your topical focus no longer matches terms the page was originally ranking for (i.e. search engines don’t see the relevance and the page dropped out of the SERPs)
  • Your title and description aren’t marketable (i.e. they don’t invite click-throughs to the page)
  • Something 404′d (error not found) somewhere along the line
• A heavy drop in time on page, which could indicate:
  • Your new content doesn’t draw the visitor in
  • Your new content is great, but calls to action fail
  • Your new content is great, but the page isn’t correctly targeting your market
• A heavy rise in bounce rate, which could indicate:
  • Your page doesn’t provide what your ad/search snippet promises
  • Your page is off putting in some manner (i.e. Too many images, too much content, not trustworthy, etc.)
  • A heavy drop in referral traffic, which could mean something as simple as your referring sites dropping off the map.

If you can’t figure it out, don’t start throwing noodles. Hire a professional SEO expert for a consultation and get rid of the guesswork. At least that way, any work you do has a much better chance of succeeding!

If it turns out that your PLP is the problem, don’t scrap it. You wouldn’t want to waste the thousands of dollars you watched fly out the window. Almost any content/page can be salvaged, it just takes a strategic approach.

• Did I define the goal of this PLP (what do you want to achieve)? Decide what the goal is for the landing page.  Are you trying to collect contact information?  Sell your product?  Talk about your services?  Whatever goal you’re going for needs to be the central theme of the landing.
• Does the title/description for the search snippet or ad match the content on the PLP? Your ad has a call to action also, so match your landing page with the ad.  For instance, if your ad says “The best professional SEO specialists money can buy”, you want your landing page to say something like “Level343: The Best Professional SEO Specialists Money Can Buy.”  Use the same phrases on the ad and the page.
• Is the page focused on its goal?
• Is the content call-to-action-focused or is there extra information? Keep it simple and direct without a whole bunch of extra words. Here, you have to keep the content as focused as possible on the call-to-action.
• Have I kept the navigation to a minimum? Limit or eliminate your navigation.  You don’t need links around your website on a landing page; these are only ways for them to leave the page.  If they leave the page before conversion, you’ve lost them.
• Have I kept distractions to a minimum? Do you need those images or are they just eye candy? Is that YouTube video important? Look at each aspect of your page and ask the same questions.
• Is the content easy to scan (bullet points rather than paragraph copy, for example)? Research has proven that individuals are more likely to click away from a wall of text. Keep paragraphs short and break them into bullet points if possible. Quick bullet points at that!
• Have I kept the sign up or contact form to a minimum? The more complicated it is and the more information you ask for, the more uncertain your visitor will be about giving that information. A good rule of thumb is, “if you don’t absolutely need it for the sale, don’t ask.”
• Does my PLP inspire trust? If you’re a member of your local BBB, provide Paypal or are registered with HackerSafe (for example), use these logos on your landing page.  Logos take little room, and these specific logos inspire trust.
• Did I test the PLPs before implementation?

Are You Listening?

Traffic, in and of itself, is just traffic. However, when you have good ad placements, that traffic becomes expensive. Therefore, you have to place a higher commitment on the PLPs those ads lead to. You have to be willing to dedicate time to those pages, because your conversion rates can always get better – unless they’re already 100% (in which case, contact us with your secret).

A strong landing page, much like a news piece, answers Who, What, Why and How.  Who are you targeting, what are you offering, why should they be interested and how do they act? Each step of the conversion process has to do its part in answering those questions.

How does conversion actually work? If you don’t know, you’re missing a vital piece of information, so pay careful attention. When you place an ad or have a paid search result, the last thing you want to do is have that link go to a generic page. Why? Let’s look carefully at the steps:

Step #1: Seeing your ad – Either your ad is on a site or you’ve paid for placement on a search engine. Whichever, a potential site visitor (not even a potential customer, yet), sees the ad or search result.

Step #2: Clicking through to your landing page – Either it catches their interest and they click, or it doesn’t – and they don’t. Clicking on the link (click-through rate) implies a certain degree of interest.

Step #3: Reading your landing page – Once they get to the page, either they read – or they don’t. If they see copy that doesn’t fit the link, the chances of them turning away are higher.  For this reason, your landing page should be relevant to the search term you targeted. For example, if you have search placement for “free business cards”, your headline and content needs to reflect “free business cards”

Step #4: Understanding the offer - Buyers are savvier than ever. They’ve learned about the fine print, marketers, so be careful with what you put in there. Somewhere in the content, they’re going to be trying to answer:  what’s the offer; what’s the catch; what’s the cost? You’d better be prepared to answer these questions within the body of the landing page itself. As a rule of thumb, it’s always best to lead with benefits and follow with features.

Step #5: Accepting the offer and ACTING – They understand the offer, catch and cost, and are now looking for a clear-cut sign of what to do next. Make this step very clear and prominent. You don’t want them hunting for it. Make sure they know what will happen next when they do act, whether they’ll receive an email, start a download, etc.

Step #6: Gaining security and trust – At some point, depending on how long it takes them to see some results, the converted individual will have second thoughts. They get that slightly nauseated “uhhh” feeling. Rather than let them have any time to get that feeling, give them some kind of encouragement, such as a thank you page that says, “You will be receiving an order confirmation in the mail. However, in the mean time, please accept this free gift as our thanks” – or something to that effect. Don’t let them leave without some sort of thank you and acknowledgement of their action.

Each step above is an important part of the conversion process; the ad itself draws them in, the call to action (and thank you) completes the process. If you’re not getting the ROI you expected – or any ROI at all – there’s something wrong in your conversion process.

Testing works to pinpoint the errors in a systematic way once you know your problem isn’t an overall site problem (such as getting iced by Penguin, in which case, call us). However, when it comes to testing and changes, you start backwards in the conversion process.

May The Results Be With You

For example, you might first test different shopping cart pages, or start by testing various trust issues. Do you have privacy and terms of use policies that are easy to see? Have you tried to put yourself in the visitor’s shoes, to see where they might feel uneasy in the sign up process? Maybe you need their social security number – do you have a question mark (for example) and a pop up that addresses why you need this information?

At each point, using A/B testing gives you a better chance of strengthening your PLP as you make changes. The changes are incremental, which allows you to pinpoint weaknesses while keeping the strengths.

We hope this article has provided you with enough information to really beef up your preferred landing pages to get the strongest conversions possible. Feel free to drop any question that comes to mind in the comments, and we’ll do our best to answer them.

“Welcome to another installment of SEO in the Outback. Today, we’re hunting a particularly elusive species of creature, situs al naturalis. They’re born with highly optimized content and navigation – these things seem to be in their DNA structure. Others in the websitus genus have to work hard to gain these attributes. These beasts are so rare they can normally only be found in carefully cultivated wildlife preserves…”

How Google tours the Outback...

You know that “Related Article” section many sites have? Well, while visiting Search Engine Land and reading Danny’s viewpoint on the Penguin Update  (I would have chosen the title “Google Ices Web Spam with Mafia Penguin Connection” but that’s just me) I happened to look over their related article section. It was almost a shock to see the titles listed there.

Oh, sure. We know Google’s been busy this year already. –And, yes, we keep up on the changes. However, in this industry, you just sort of absorb the changes and roll on: like California stops for marketers.  Once you’ve seen the changes and figured out how to (or if you need to) counteract them, you incorporate that knowledge and then move on to the next crisis {algo change | client | ranking dive}.

With that in mind, maybe you’ll understand why it startled me to see all the changes listed in one spot like that (and I’m sure they missed a few). Especially since I remember each one being touted as “rewarding high-quality sites”, “getting rid of spam”, and “making search better”.

So… is it working? Or did these updates (and the pre-rollout announcement of them) just scare some webmasters into cleaning up their sites? And, what exactly would they be cleaning up?

The All Natural Optimized, Ad-Free, User-friendly Website

So let’s break it down. What HAS Google been doing with their {beloved |hated | tolerated} search engine? According to them, they’re focusing on tighter, better searches. For the website owner, that means:

Quality content

But I LOOK harmless enough...

Panda had business owners struggling, no doubt. “What do you mean, they want quality?” Although Google’s Amit Singhal thoughtfully posted the Google blog “More guidance on building high quality sites,” it was abysmally lacking in essential “guide” like tendencies. It isn’t until you get to their Webmaster Guidelines that you start to get an idea of what the search engine sees as high quality.

As an aside:  Understand this. Whether you agree with a set of best practices or not is a moot point. You need to be aware of them, nonetheless, because the search engine is coded to see these best practices as indicative of quality. It’d be like us seeing “14K” on a yellow bracelet; all of a sudden, that bracelet takes on a shine that says “quality”.

Anyway… quality content isn’t thin. It doesn’t have a ton of keywords not-so-artfully buried in sentences. It has headers. And sections. And paragraphs and bullet points. (It probably doesn’t have fractured sentences, or lots of “ands”, but che serà, serà)

Quality vs… not quality is like:

• The difference between a Chrysler 300 and a Rolls Royce Phantom
• The difference between diamonds and cubic zirconia
• The difference between butter and spread

Fewer ads above the fold

If you have ads on your website, you need to take a good look with a reality-focused eyeball. Go ahead; load your site up and take a look-see. Is a banner ad the first thing you see? Okay, no problem… let your eyes slowly scoot down the screen – but don’t scroll. Percentage-wise, how many ads do you think you have versus content?

3 signs that your ad use outweighs your content:

1. If you say, “What content?”
2. Between affiliate links and ad links, all your text is underlined.
3. You use AdChoice for your article images.

Natural Optimization

Now this… this is the part that floors me. No matter how it’s phrased, Google is saying “your site needs to be optimized (i.e. perfected for relevancy),” which is basically what it says in the Google Guidelines. However, it also says, through the (paraphrased) words of Matt Cutts, “Your site can’t be optimized or it will be penalized.” Of course, as Cutts said when the Penguin update came out, “That’s not what we meant at all,” even though they’re still talking about an “over-optimization penalty”.

What does this double-speak mean? It means, to me at least, that the search engines are looking for natural optimization. In other words, relevance that happens out in the wild.

-And yet, if you look at the animal kingdom, some wild animals started out in shelters: cultivated, nurtured and groomed for their future life as a wild creature. Things that make you go hmmm…

Website Quality Assurance – Emphasis on “Quality”

People fuss over the strangest things. For example, they’ll {moan | complain | whine} when their site traffic drops 1%, but completely ignore that their conversion rate went up 3%. They’ll complain about 300 Twitter followers and totally miss the fact that Twitter brings a whopping 9,000 visits a month to the table. In other words, the {numbers | metrics} they use are skewed. What they use to decide growth is messed up.

Now, you’re not going to get a highly optimized, user-friendly, ad free website all by accident. Perfection is created. Therefore, you create one, while doing so in such a way as to make it appear as if “it juz happened, yo.”

Since Google’s guidance post seemed less than guiding, we’ve created a guidance post of our own. The emphasis is “quality, not quantity”.

• When was the last time you visited your site? (Correct answer: frequently – this week, etc.) Visiting your site should be a regular occurrence. You never know when something that was working perfectly yesterday is now toast today.
• Using LinkSlueth or other crawler, check your pages for link errors (404s, 500s,etc.) or redirect loops (301 to 301 to 301).
• Test redirections any time they’re set up, to make sure they’re working properly.
• When you put up new pages or replace old ones, make sure they’re visible to the public with no errors.
• Make sure each page/post on your site has a proper title, description, and headline.
• Make sure each page/post has unique, informative content.
• Use proper, semantic-style writing (headlines, section headings, paragraphs, bullet points, etc.). These give ample opportunity for visitors and search engines to decide the topic of the page and if it’s relevant to their search query.
• Connect the dots from search engine snippets to the content on the page and the images used with the content.

Remember that a good website is much like a book. A book may have several sections, but they’re all about the same topic (whatever that topic is). Your website is nothing more than a book – and a book with less than 150 pages, at that (for most of you). When you strip optimization down to its bare bones, it’s simply a way of making sure you stay on topic for a particular search query.

The Ending

A successful website isn’t about how much traffic you get. It’s about how many customers you keep. It’s not about quantity, but about quality; the quality of your visitors makes a difference on whether they buy or not. Doesn’t it make sense, then, that what matters to { your visitors | search engines } is your ability to provide them with quality?

Let’s face it. There are plenty of things you can do to rank, and rank well, in the search engines. Some are legit, some are not so legit, some are straight up illegal, but they’re out there. You can influence the SERPs, although not with a guarantee on the results. For example, you can’t know for a fact that the hard work you put in is going to get your site in that coveted #1 spot.

Influence

Two Big Factors in Ranking You Might Want to Know

The inability to guarantee placement is one of the biggest things that make business owners leery of SEO. “What do you mean I’m going to pay you money and may not get the results I want? What kind of deal is that?”

The deal is the two ranking factors we have absolutely no control over:

1. Google’s daily, monthly, yearly algorithm changes – Google doesn’t tell us, anymore than it tells you, when an algo change is upcoming. Some SEOs spend hours poring over new and acquired patents, sort of like an SEO prognosticator, to see if they can get a glimpse into the future. Some are closer than others, but there’s still a lot of guess work involved.
2. Your per term competitors – Each term you target has a set of businesses that are also targeting the term. So, for example, if you’re targeting “auto insurance quotes”, there will be at least 100 sites aiming (in some degree or another) for that term. At this point, it becomes a race against budget, manpower and willingness to invest. If your competitors all have more money, manpower and willingness to invest, your optimization firm will be fighting a losing battle to get (and keep) you ranking.

Is Your Online Marketing Budget Realistic?

Why is it that most companies can see the benefit of, say, word of mouth marketing as it applies in the physical world, but can’t see the benefit of WOMM online through social? Why is it fully acceptable to spend thousands of dollars on color brochures, direct mail marketing and so on, but a little bit of online content makes them balk? What is the defining characteristics of “worthwhile expenditures” when it comes to marketing your business?

The truth, which should be glaringly obvious, is so old it has cobwebs all over it. It takes money to make money. You have to invest, whether it’s time, manpower or other resources, for things to happen. Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum!

Now, we don’t suggest that you throw away all your marketing efforts in favor of dumping the entire budget into SEO. What we do suggest, however, is taking a good hard look at your online budget and comparing it to what you expect from your online efforts.

Word Of Mouth

Are you trying to order fine dining on a fast food menu?

For example, we get occasionally get potential clients that want SEO fast food (link title: SEO Fast Food: I’ll Take #1 Ranking with That, but Hold the Fries). Much like the individuals who stuff themselves on McDonald’s and Wendy’s while complaining about not being able to eat healthy, the “fast food SEO” individuals want to pay Value Menu prices for fine dining results. It doesn’t work that way; you get what you pay for.

The “Tommy Boy” Philosophy

If you’ve ever seen the 1995 movie, Tommy Boy, you might know where we’re going with this. One of the famous bits of dialogue from this movie has to do with guarantees. You can get the whole dialogue on IMDB, if you’re interested, but the “finer points” are as follows:

Customer: But why do they put the guarantee on the box?

Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

That’s a pointed statement, but it’s also a straightforward philosophy. Many business owners spend money on “guaranteed” services, only to find out that what they bought was a bunch of crap. Instead of looking at the guarantee, don’t you think it’s about time you started looking at the value of what you want from the services you’re paying for?

Value = Investment Cost, in Time, Money, Manpower, Resources

Your competitors and you have something in common. You all have put a “perceived value” on optimization. The question is (and you’re hinging all your online marketing efforts on this bet), “Do I perceive the value of optimization as being higher or lower than my competitors?”

Anytime you’re targeting the SERPS as your main source of income, you’re betting that you see the value of ranking as higher than your competitors do. You’re betting that your competitors don’t know about the value, and therefore won’t optimize or otherwise invest in online marketing. Because the truth is, the more perceived value the SERPs have for your competitors, the tougher the fight will be for you.

-And here’s where the other avenues come in, and where you really need to open your eyes.

Optimization is one piece of the pie. Traffic is another. Conversion is another. WOMM is yet another. All of these things take time to perform. They take manpower. They take resources. When you hire an online marketing firm, these things take an initial investment cost, and then an ongoing investment cost.

You have to decide if the value you perceive from SERP and social marketing is worth the investment cost – plain and simple. Your competitors already know the answer; that’s why they’re your competitors. Do you?

Glow sticks and SEO…I promise there is a connection.  As a writer I often find inspiration in day to day life and this is no exception.

Glow Sticks & SEO

A few months ago I had checked into an airport hotel for a night of relaxation before an early morning flight.  Visions of a quiet evening in mind were interrupted by a crazy wind storm in Los Angeles that blew up out of nowhere.  So picture this, I am running through the parking lot, darting flying palm fronds.  After I narrowly escaped death by palm frond (those things are vicious when they come flying down with you locked in as their target) I did make it safely into the hotel…just in time for the power to go out.  Waiting to check in when the computers are down and 10 people are in front of me, I knew it wasn’t going to be the relaxing night I had hoped for.

The alarm went off (warning: apparently power outages cause security warnings in hotels, they warned us to prepare to evacuate and mentioned a security breach – not all that comforting).  After a few minutes a few little security lights lit up but basically we were all standing in the dark. Some of us amused by the drama and others not so much.

That’s when I noticed the nice lady walking around with a box, handing something out.  Anxious to see what goody I was going to get I stepped a little closer to her.  To my surprise, it was glow sticks she was handing out!  Glow sticks!  Awesome!

A little bit of confusion ensued, as not everyone knows you need to crack and shake the stick to activate the glow.  Thanks to my nieces and nephew and many nights playing with glow sticks at the cottage I was prepared and quickly cracked and shook mine into a nice little glow that I promptly started to twirl through the air (yep the nieces and nephew taught me well and would be proud).

And that’s when it hit me “This is their contingency plan? Glow sticks? Really?”  They are fun and they make a great story but they don’t really give off any measurable or quality light.

And then of course since I had been away from my computer for a few hours at this point, I was in work-withdrawal and instantly my mind starting churning.  I started thinking about all the things we prepare for:  earthquake kits for the “big one” and life insurance policies to protect our loved ones, bug spray and sunscreen when we head out for a road trip.  We prepare for the big and the small things in life.

But what about our business?  What about our websites?  Where is the contingency plan for that?  What preparation do we have in place if things go wrong?  

Just like we assume the lights will work in a hotel, we assume our site will do what it’s supposed to (sell products/generate leads/generate add revenue etc).

So what should the hotel have done?  I really don’t know but since I’m not a hotel manager, I don’t really need to know.

But now that my eyes have been opened, I realized I need a contingency plan for my site and you need a contingency plan for your site.

Fast forward an hour or two and I’m at a new hotel a few miles away that has power and I’ve got my laptop fired up – I can always relax on the plane the next day!

I wanted to capture some thoughts and create a contingency plan and now I want to share that plan with you.  Especially after you were kind enough to read my whole story to get to this much alluded to content.

So, let’s assume all is going well – your keywords are ranking, your site is getting traffic and the traffic is buying.  All very good things and you are happy.

But what happens if one day something breaks?

Do you know what to check to find the error?  Do you know how to fix what you find?

(Do you have an SEO company working for you?  Ask them if they have a contingency plan also!)

While glow sticks are fun, I would never want you to rely on them for light.  While I hope your systems for generating leads/sales don’t break, I want you to have a solution if they do.

If you are in desperation mode, you don’t have time to second guess your action plan.  You need a checklist you can work from so you can act quickly and efficiently.

Let’s take a look at my contingency plan – starting with the proper set up:

To ensure that you can act accordingly when there is a problem, you need to start by making sure you have access to some important data.

• Install Google Analytics or some other analytics/stats program.
• Set up Google and Bing webmaster tools.
• Take a baseline report to see what things look like now and file it away for future use.

Now do a quick check-up to ensure there is nothing broken now:

• Check your site for broken links and fix any that you find.
• Test your shopping cart.

Now you have a good working foundation and baseline of data to pull from if needed.

In the unfortunate event that you do encounter a problem – whether it’s a decrease in traffic, or sales or rankings, you need to have a quick action plan in place to find out why.

The bottom line is when something goes wrong most people panic and lose valuable time.  If you have a contingency plan or at least a starting point, you can get to work on solving the problem quicker and with minimal impact.  Review this action plan as your starting point and add anything you think I’ve missed.  It’s important to have an action plan that is specific to your site and business.

Guest post by Jennifer Horowitz

Jennifer Horowitz Director of Marketing at Ecombuffet. com handles in house marketing, as well as consulting with clients and overseeing all client campaigns. Follow her on Twitter @Ecombuffet

Yes. There are such things as real (i.e. legitimate) SEO specialists, practitioners, and companies, believe it or not. Lately, however, we’ve met many potential clients who are starting to wonder. This turns into a heavy amount of disbelief and mistrust when they come to us; providing a potential client with a service quote is much like climbing Mount Everest. It’s so fraught with pitfalls, there’s no telling whether you’ll get to the top.

Legitimacy is not easy

Unfortunately, we’ve also seen a lot of sites that further fuel this distaste for our industry. The fact is, there are plenty of fraudsters out there, claiming to be SEO specialists when they aren’t. They promise the moon and deliver air.

Eliminating the SEO Scams

The only way to combat this type of thing is information and transparency. You, the person looking for an SEO specialist or firm, have to know the warning signs of snake oil optimization. Here are just a few of the questions we’ve been asked, and the answers a legitimate optimizer should offer:

Can you guarantee ranking?

No. Quite simply, there is no way to guarantee top ranking and deliver, especially on legitimate, valuable key terms. An SEO company spouting guarantees isn’t worth your time. Having said that, there are companies that offer “paid upon placement” business models. You pay a base amount for the services and then additional amounts for higher rankings.

What steps are you going to take to optimize my site?

No One Should Do This.

We get this question a lot. However, any optimizer worth hiring will not give you a definitive answer. If they do, walk away. Optimization is something that should be carefully planned based on the needs of the company, site and target market.

For example, the only steps we “cookie cutter” are clearly posted on our SEO services page:

1. Talk with you to learn about your business, needs, goals and how you see your web presence.
2. Perform an in depth audit to verify your needs and current online standings.
3. Create a well-rounded organic search campaign, with an emphasis on content strategies for the best results.

To tell you the truth, even this isn’t set in stone. For example, an audit may be minimal, based on the fact that a site only has three pages.

How much is this going to cost?

If any SEO specialist gives you a quote without first looking at your site, run far, far away. You may get an estimate, along with a disclaimer that the price is subject to change once research has been performed, but that should be it. No optimizer should give a definitive price straight from the gate.

Why? Sites come in all shapes, sizes and points of focus. If you’re targeting high competition key terms, for example, it can take a lot longer to rank. If a site only has 20 pages, conversion optimization won’t take as long as a site with 2,000 pages. If your brand is well known, developing conversation and social engagement may not take as long as if you’re currently a “non-entity”.

The cost of optimization services should always be flexible, depending entirely on your site – not the average site on the Web.

How long will it take before I see results?

Answer: it depends. This is the only acceptable answer before you hire an SEO company. It depends on how many (and which) competitors you have, what your niche is, what key terms you’re targeting, how well structured your website is and many other factors. Before a specialist starts digging into your site, they aren’t going to know the answers to all that. In other words, they’ll be guessing, and guessing poorly.

The Truth

Always be honest

With the answers you’ll get from real specialists, you might think, “Well, if there are no guarantees, why bother?”

The truth is that optimization isn’t precision science; it’s a process. In fact, it’s the process of making your website as perfect, as effective and as useful as possible to your visitors. It helps streamline your site – taking into account your industry niche and target market – to make it as topical as possible.

By the time your hired SEO specialist or firm is finished, there should be no inconsistencies, no dots left unconnected, no pages lacking call to actions, and no meta description that isn’t marketable.

In short, when you hire an optimizer, you’re hiring someone to turn your site into a well-oiled machine, interesting to both search engines and visitors. The real guarantee is this: we’ll do the best we can, based on the extensive experience we have, to provide you with a business website that does its job.

We’re starting to wonder if we (that is, the Level343 team) are really search engine optimizers. I mean, sure, we provide SEO services of the organic flavor, but when we see the varying examples and definitions of SEO, we have to wonder. Either the industry definition of SEO badly needs to be updated, or we’re not SEOs.

Lost Art

From Search Engine Land: [SEO] is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines.

From Search Engine Watch: Search engine optimization means ensuring that your Web pages are accessible to search engines and are focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found.

Reading these definitions from industry-leading websites is frustrating. They are so lacking in the reality of what we do for a living. Not that the definitions are actually wrong, per se, just that they don’t define the scope of the work anymore.

SEO is Like… Waitressing

Funny thing: Gabriella and I have a lot of experience in managing restaurants. Let me tell you; it’s one of the best ways to learn customer relations. We highly recommend at least three months of being a waiter for any business-minded individual.

One of the things you learn as a waiter is how to be helpful and invisible at the same time. A good waiter doesn’t hover; a good waiter watches the tables and doesn’t appear until the empty glass hits the table or the fork scrapes the last bit of food from the plate. The key is to make sure the patron’s needs are taken care of before they even realize there is a need to fulfill. This has to happen with every table, not just one.

Optimization works much the same way. It isn’t noticeable. It’s isn’t flagrant. You shouldn’t be able to visit a site and immediately be able to tell it’s been optimized. You don’t put links in the footer that say “Optimized by…” or “SEO services by…” You don’t stuff headlines and content full of key terms. In other words, by the time we’re done with your site, you shouldn’t be able to tell we did anything unless you look at our action list.

SEO is a Delicate Art

It takes a deft touch and precision marketing for optimization to work like it’s supposed to. Yes, it’s called search engine marketing, but it is definitely not just marketing to search engines. As we’ve said time and again, search engines don’t pay the bills.

The titles are carefully crafted, as are the meta descriptions. The content is delicately assembled in all its various parts, from the headlines to the bullet points to the final line and everything in between. The terms are placed with precision in order to draw the reader’s eye and the search engine’s interest. It’s a fine line to walk, and we walk it every day.

Singular Purpose

All this artistry goes into one, very singular, purpose. Conversion.

This Is What We Do Every Day

Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of the whole search engine thing, and skipped straight to the end user. –And, from talking to others in the industry, I’m pretty sure we can safely say we aren’t the only ones who look at things this way. To us, optimization is about making you, the client, look good, and we do that in whatever way is ethical and necessary. When we optimize a site, it includes:

Branding the company, or building up an established brand– Every part of your on site and off site activities affects your brand. You can’t just write a piece of content; you have to take your brand message into account with every piece of content you market. That includes the videos, infographics, images, words, alternate image descriptions, blog posts, articles, press releases, how you display your content, how you market your content and the words/platforms/sites you use to do so.

Taking care of current and potential technical issues – The foundation of your site, the code, is a part that’s never seen by your visitors. It’s only experienced. It’s experienced by broken links, poor navigation, slow loading pages, large images shrunk by code, hidden shopping carts and bad buying processes.

Keeping target markets in the lime light – In hunting and darts, as well as other activities, the target is what you aim for: preferably the bull’s eye. You have to keep your eye on the center of the target, and you do this by careful consideration every step of the way. For example, when you write your title and description for a page, you aren’t doing this so the search engines will come visit your site. You’re doing this so people will visit your site, and you don’t want just any old visitor. You want visitors interested in what you have to sell, whether it’s products, services or information. Your message in the SERPs has to reflect this as well as the content on your site does.

Keeping your market’s culture and personal brand in mind – Your target demographics have a specific culture. They have a personal brand they want to convey. For example, the single mom with three kids is stretching every penny to make them count. How does your product or service help her with her personal image? What words appeal to her, compared to the Ritz couple with no kids? How does language use differ from country to country, and town to town? Your offerings, in products and content, have to reflect the individual cultures – both native and demographic.

Brand Yourself

Creating engaging, conversational content – Your content, in whatever form you choose to share, has to engage the reader and create a conversation. This isn’t easy. It’s story telling in the finest sense. An old creative writing teacher  said “Show them; don’t tell them.” It’s not always possible to get the finer points across in this way, but it’s definitely possible to create a “big picture” scenario and help the reader place themselves in that picture. This is the affect you’re going for. If you can convince them your product or service will make them more successful, happier, healthier, and so on, your campaign is doing its job.

So What the Heck Are We, If Not SEOs?

We’re coming to the conclusion that we’re online brand marketers. It’s the only “title” we can come up with that really seems to fit the skill set we use to promote our clients. –Because the standard definition of search engine optimization, when compared to the services many of today’s optimizers put out falls under the not applicable section. It just doesn’t do the job justice.

You’ve read all the SEO blogs out there, including this one. You’ve tried, tested, tweaked and torque your site and search marketing efforts to the best possible calibrations. You’re confident that your site is as tight as it can be, and your marketing efforts will soon pay off.

But…

Life is a Beach

It’s hard for a business owner to just sit back and wait. As much as we dream about being paid for doing nothing, and as much as those pictures of people relaxing on the beach with a beer and a laptop appeal to us, we know that isn’t reality. No… reality is more like Murphy’s Law. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

Instead of waiting and chewing your fingernails down to the quick, start proofing for problems in your SEO efforts. Here’s a brief list of things you can look for and do something about before they get in the way:

That Darn Robots.txt File

Many a website owner has blown the first month or so of an SEO campaign because of a simple mistake in the robots.txt file of their site. Two lines can really jack up a campaign:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

The first line says, “Hey, all you robots, search engine spiders, crawlers, whatever…” The second line says, “Don’t visit any pages on this site.” Generally, these lines are placed in the robots.txt by a webmaster who forgets to take them out after a design/redesign.

Proofing this problem: The robots.txt file can be found in the main directory of your website. You can view it with any browser, simply by typing in the URL http://mysite.com/robots.txt (or http://www.mysite.com/robots.txt, depending on your settings). If your site is supposed to be visible to search engines, make sure the “disallow” line isn’t in your file.

Canonical URLs – To W3 or Not?

View your site structure as Google sees it. You can do this by typing “site:mysite.com” or “site:www.mysite.com”. Scroll down your personal SERPs, looking at the URLs. What you’re looking for is a www.mysite.com and a mysite.com version. You don’t want both. If you’re seeing both versions, you have an issue with your canonical URLs. There’s a penalty for this, but it’s self-imposed.

You see, all the links, ranking and so on you accumulate to your site is finite. You have a limited amount. –And, although you see www and non-www versions as the same site, search engines don’t. This means that your SEO efforts become split between two versions.

Proofing this problem: If you find both versions, you’ll need to update your .htaccess file with a 301 redirect, again found in the main directory of your site. Add the following lines to go from non-www to www:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [L,R=301]

You want to replace “mysite” with your actual URL. You can also set up a Google Webmaster Tools account and specify which version you prefer Google to index.

Certain Structure

Proper Content Structure

Would you put a roof on your house without first building the walls? Of course not.  A house is built in certain order, and so is a piece of content. Not only does it help your readers, in that proper structure provides an easy-to-read piece, but it also help search engines digest your pages better.

Proofing this problem:  Look over your content and make sure you have proper page structure. For example, a #1 heading (<h1></h1>) should never come after a #2 heading or be left off entirely. Make use of normal document structures for stronger pages.

Duplicate Duplication

Duplicated content doesn’t bring site penalties; after all, if it did, you’d be in trouble any time someone scraped your site. However, it does lessen the overall quality of your site, whether it’s duplicate content or copied meta information.

Proofing this problem: If you have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you can go in and see what suggestions it has for your meta information. Otherwise, look over your meta tags and titles to make sure they’re unique to the page they’re on. If not, rewrite them!

Key Term Much?

Just because you can use a key term on your page, doesn’t mean you should. Too many key terms can be as bad as too many uses of the same term. If you’ve poured a lot of key terms into the same page, you might want to rethink that strategy.

Key terms should be considered topics. Main topics, sub topics, even tertiary topics, but no more. Really, how many topics can one page be about?

Quality & Clarity

Proofing this problem:  Go through your pages; after all, you have nothing better to do than chew your nails, right? Ask yourself what three things the page is about. What’s the main topic? How many topics can it reasonably be broken in to? If you can find five or six topics, it may be better to tighten it up to two or three and create another page with the other two or three. The more tightly focused a page is, the better it will be received!

Proofing for Problems Isn’t for Wusses

It takes a little time and a lot of attention to detail to proof your SEO campaign, especially once you’ve already started implementing things. In fact, the often-meticulous nature of optimization is one of the reasons businesses hire professional SEO experts in the first place. However, by taking the time to tighten up your site and campaign from point to point, you’ll also be increasing the possibility of high returns from any marketing campaign you set your mind and resources to.

A long time ago, back in the dark ages of 2008, we wrote an article about building your SEO content. We know, because we recently practiced a little bit of the due diligence we preach so much about, and performed a content audit. Although it’s easy to say, “Things have changed a lot” or “SEO changes quickly,” we got a good view of how much things have changed by digging through our dusty archives.

Building Your SEO Content

The original version of this article, “Building Your SEO Content” (no longer available), was written in simple terms anyone can understand. Write articles rich in content and key terms. Even then, we were cautioning businesses to keep the terms to a minimum, and not overpower the content with SEO. Yet, we also spoke about things like article directories and Ezine sites.

Yes, indeed – many things have changed. One of the biggest things to change is our own approach to content development and marketing; you can’t help but grow your understanding when you put things in practice on a daily basis.

Content Domination
We recently wrote about content domination – using content to stay ahead of the competition. However, the focus of the article was on the competition itself, not on your readership. –And really, what good is dominating in the SERPs if your readers aren’t satisfied? What good is doing anything if it doesn’t translate to growing your readership and sales? To be honest, it doesn’t do you much good at all.

How Much Can You Reasonably Expect Them To Read?

With content domination, it’s easy to get into the habit of pouring out content in a flood. You can, however, ending up washing your readers right out of your pages, articles and blog posts. For example, sometimes Mashable puts out several articles in a day, and you think, “Wow, I wish I could do that!” Not everybody is a Mashable. In fact, most people aren’t.

Here’s the deal. Mashable has a wide audience, and they cater to that audience. They have people who follow specific sections rather than everything that comes across the wire. Therefore, when they post several articles in a day, they’re targeting sections of their audience. They don’t expect all their readers to read every article.

What about you? Are you bombarding your readers with content? Are you putting out three or four posts a day, without targeting specific areas of your site? For that matter, do you even have specific areas of your site?

For example, at the top of our blog, you’ll see five categories. Were we to start posting every day, we would:

• Offer an option for readers to subscribe to individual categories.
• Create a single post, per category, per day.
• Provide an option for readers to receive weekly (rather than daily) updates.

In other words, as we increased our output, we would also increase our readers’ ability to control that output.

Control your output

Using Various Types of Content – Where Should I Put This?

Right now, you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute. If I have to be careful about how much content I put out in a day, how can I possibly dominate?” That’s a great question, and we have a great answer.

Have you ever noticed that there’s more than one type of content? For example, pages (such as about pages, FAQs, whitepapers and so on) tend to hold long-lasting information that doesn’t need tweaking often. Blog posts, on the other hand, tend to hold information that doesn’t last as long, while press releases and news pieces have a short period of freshness.

When you’re publishing high amounts of content, you have to keep these “types” in mind. By creating a content strategy that allows for freshness issues, you can provide the copy needed without overwhelming your readers. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Define the freshness of the content.

Decide whether the information is long lasting, and how often it might need to updating. If it’s long lasting information, consider creating a page rather than a blog post or article.

Step 2: Define the purpose of the content.

Understand that building content for SEO purposes should never be the main goal of any piece of copy. The goals should always be to:

1. Create a constant, growing source of information (your website and online presence)
2. Create copy that informs, entertains and helps the reader in some way
3. Create copy that causes conversation, engagement and interest

With this in mind, the next step is to define whether a specific piece of copy’s main goal is to grow the amount of information available on your site, keep your readers informed or create engagement.

Step 3: Separate content pieces into freshness categories.

You can choose how to name your categories, but the categories should define the freshness of the content. We use static (long lasting information), transitional (medium freshness use) and dynamic (timely pieces or those that will need updated quickly).

For the most part, your work is done. Static copy generally makes strong pages. Transitional makes for strong blog posts; dynamic makes for good news releases or occasional blog posts. However, a final step will help further define your content output.

Step 4: Check your work.

For each piece of copy, follow the checklist before publication:

1. Will this piece expire within a week? If yes, it’s a news piece. Go to #4. If no, go to #2.
2. Will this piece expire within six months? If yes, it’s a blog post. Go to #8. If no, go to #3.
3. Will this piece need to be updated regularly? If no, it’s a page. Go to #5.  If yes, go to #8.
4. If this is a news piece, can it be used as a press release? If no, it’s a blog post. If yes, stop and use it as a press release.
5. This is a page. Can it be made into a whitepaper and/or case study? If yes, stop and use it as a whitepaper and/or case study. If no, go to #6.
6.  This is a page. Can it be made into a FAQ? If yes, use it as a FAQ. If no, go to #7.
7. This is a page. Can it be made into a static article? If yes, make it a static article. If no, and the information can’t be included in a pre-existing page, it’s a blog post. Go to #8.
8. This is a blog post. Make sure it’s highly readable, easy to understand and interesting. Read aloud for grammatical and spelling errors. Go to #9.
9. This is a blog post. Schedule for the appropriate category. Go to #10.
10. Rinse and repeat.

Want to save this checklist? Download the Content Freshness Checklist (PNG infograph).

Watch, Listen and Learn

As you watch the SERPs, your rankings and your traffic flow, don’t forget to also watch the conversation. Which blog posts brought the most inbound links and social engagement? It’s easy to be caught up in ranking and traffic, but without engagement and conversation, all the content in the world won’t do you much good. By paying attention to the topics, tone, headlines and so on that bring the most interest, you can apply what you learn to future posts, articles, and whitepapers.

Remember, the main goals for any business’ content marketing are to increase authority, trust and engagement. When you have those, the traffic will come on its own.

Occasionally, Wikipedia has spot-on information. On this occasion, it’s their definition of online reputation management: “Online reputation management (or monitoring) is the practice of monitoring the Internet reputation of a person, brand or business, with the goal of suppressing negative mentions entirely, or pushing them lower on search engine results pages to decrease their visibility. [It's] the act of monitoring, addressing or mitigating SERPs (search engine result pages) or mentions in online media and Web sphere content.”

Not bad. Not bad at all. –But is that all ORM is? Suppressing negative mentions? We don’t think so.

Reputation Is All Inclusive, and It Starts With You

You don’t build your online reputation in the SERPs alone, as many would have you believe. Word of mouth marketing, for example, is a huge asset – or a huge obstacle – for any business. While WOM may translate to your search rankings eventually, it translates to the consumer first. –And, while you want positive rankings in the SERPs, the search results should never be seen as the end all, be all of your marketing or reputation management concerns.

It starts with you:

Your website. It starts with how visitors perceive your business, based on the information you provide. For example, if you shout “Transparency!” while hiding your privacy policy or (for ecommerce) shipping information, your claims of transparency won’t mesh with your actions.

Other examples are the sites that offer you a “free trial” loud and clear. Once you order the free trial, you find out that you also signed up for a membership. Oh, yes, the membership was mentioned, but in print so tiny you’d need a telescope to see it.

Your customer service and promises kept. It continues with how you deal with your customers’ problems – or don’t deal, as the case may be. For instance:

• Do you provide more than one way for your customers to reach you, such as a phone number and a dedicated customer email address?
• Is the phone manned, or do they have to leave a message for you to call back?
• Do you clearly outline on your website what the customer should expect from your service team?
• Do you actively watch social networks for positive/negative mentions?

Red Alert

In social media, you should always keep an eye out for mentions of your company and social accounts. Of course, you don’t have to respond to every comment (although it helps), but certain types of comments should definitely be addressed and not left to float away.

For example, the following hashtags, along with your company name or Twitter account:

• Alert – Comments with #sucks
• Yellow Alert – Comments with #fail
• Orange Alert – Comments with #epicfail
• Red Alert – Comments with #scam

On Facebook, you might see comments like this: “I went to the [company name] event where I was promised a fancy, four-course meal freshly prepared, and all I got was this T-Shirt. No, really – all I got was the T-Shirt.”

Of course, the truth is that you probably won’t see this comment, because it was posted on their wall instead of yours. Therefore, it’d be hidden for you, but not, unfortunately, to their 500+ friends, family and fans. You can’t fight what you can’t see.

However, keeping your promises and providing excellent customer service really aren’t that important… that is, if your reputation doesn’t mean anything to you.

How you deal with publicity. When you’re publicly lauded, do you brag about it? When you’re publicly criticized, do you whine and moan (or worse, ignore/delete the criticism)? Think about this; you’re online. It’s one of the most public venues the world has ever known. You can’t silence the critics, and you can only cheapen the compliments. Think carefully before you respond to comments for, or against, your company.

How you extend your business. Comment spam, anyone? No? How about article spamming? Many business owners look at tactics like these as the quickest ways to grow their business. However, we have to ask – what does comment spam actually achieve in terms of reputation, other than creating disgust in the spammed bloggers?

True, not all bloggers moderate, their comments. However, what about readers who come across spammy comments with your company name and website in them? How can you not see that it reeks of desperation, when it appears that the only way you can get publicity is to fake it? Enough said, we think.

Bad Stuff Can and Does Happen, BUT…

Bad things happen...

Yes, your competition can get online and post fake, horrible reviews about you. –And yes, it’s true that not every customer will be a happy one. This is when Wikipedia’s definition comes in to play.

-BUT –

Online, you are your own worst enemy. To be more exact, you are your company’s worst enemy. Everything you say and do, as we have said multiple times before, is visible online. It can be passed from person to person, and often is.

Online reputation management is more than just dealing with bad publicity. It starts with you, doing your best to make sure the publicity never goes bad.

Over the past year, we’ve seen an emerging trend among big business clients. It’s disturbing, this trend, because it points to the fact that a lot of businesses believed the SEO hype and didn’t pay attention to what the actual practitioners were saying. So we’ll say it again.

SEO is not the end all, be all of online marketing. It’s a layover point on the way to success; not the final stop.

No Way Out

Look at a car, as an example. It takes a lot of parts for a car to work and get from point A to point B. You can have all those parts but the wheels, and the car still won’t go. That’s what you’re looking at with inbound marketing. SEO is the wheels, but you still need the rest of the car to make it go.

Emerging Trend in Big Business Websites

Several potential clients have come to us lately with a big, fat, noticeable problem. They talk about needing optimization. They talk about keywords, traffic and links. In other words, they use a whole lot of SEO lingo to describe what’s happening. But they miss the boat.

When you’re getting 2 million hits for over 2,000 relevant key terms and phrases… When you have over 300,000 links to your site with relevant terms as anchor text on strong pages… In other words, when you have the kind of traffic site owners dream of, SEO is not your core problem. (By the way, these aren’t numbers picked out of the air – these are actual numbers for a site we recently reviewed).

That’s not to say your site couldn’t use more optimization, but it does mean it isn’t the core issue. The traffic is already coming in. It’s already relevant, interested traffic.

So what boat are they missing?

Somewhere along the line, these (and many other) business owners got the idea that traffic means conversions. They assumed that more traffic meant more people buying. As we have seen by the trend of potential clients, this is far from true.

Search Engine Optimization vs. Selling Your Product

To be blunt: SEO alone will not sell your product. It doesn’t matter if you have 2 million visitors if no one wants to buy your custom-made banana peel high heels for $300. It can’t make your product look interesting. It can’t make your prices worth paying. It can’t make the shipping costs look attractive, your services needed or your site usable.

If you have a crappy product, site or service, SEO brings publicity to your crappy product, site or service.

Touch, Taste, Hear, Smell, See

Touch, Taste, Hear, Smell, See

When you walk into a store to buy something, your senses are engaged. Think about that new car smell, or the smell of new clothes and furniture. You can touch these things, run your fingers over material and feel how soft or smooth it is. You can see the shine on the chrome bumper of a car or the dazzle of sequins on a dress. You can hear a clock chime, a car motor purr or a toy chirp. The only sense that isn’t engaged in most cases is taste.

On top of that, consider the way things are displayed. Cars are parked at an easy to get in angle. Jewelry is displayed on velvet backgrounds. Clothes are hung on the wall or draped around mannequins.  In grocery stores, products are lined in such a way to move you through the whole store for those impulse buys.

See

Online, the only engaged sense is sight. We can’t reach in and touch the products. Therefore, your website has to make up for the missing elements through sight. Somehow, you have to grab that buying instinct with only what the person can see. How do you do that? By grabbing them by something far more powerful than the physical senses: emotional desire.

Tapping into the Powerful Emotion of Need with Content and Calls to Action

Need is a powerful emotion, but it doesn’t have to be there initially. What has to be there is the potential of need, or the “I want” syndrome. Does the visitor digging through your hand-made cuckoo clocks really need one? No, but they want one.

So what builds that emotion? How do you turn want into need?

Buyer Psychology

It sounds sneaky. To some, it even sounds underhanded. What it really is, however, is marketing and buyer psychology.

Buyer psychology isn’t a myth. There’ve been enough repeatable studies to point towards science and fact. By guiding the buyer through “converting” content and calls to action, you’re allowing them to convince themselves they really need your product. How do you do this?

Well, we’ve covered this topic a lot over the past year, probably because of the trends. Here are a few posts that go far more in to depth than we have time for in this article:

In Presenting Your Product as a Masterpiece: You Can’t Market a Piece of Junk, we covered how to use product descriptions to sell. In short form, this means including the features, benefits, values and display pictures in an easily digestible, attractive format.

Online Marketing: Are YOU Practicing Converting Conversation explains how online conversions are much like a relationship, and must be careful managed. This article includes four rules for practicing the art of converting conversation. Are You Outstanding or Just Standing Out is the follow up, with several ideas of how to stand out from a constantly building din of online stores.

Finally, Has Your E-Commerce Shopping Cart Ran Away With Your Sales gives several solutions for shopping cart abandonment issues.

Sneaky Marketing or Good Business Sense?

If you think it’s sneaky, the way products are marketed, consider this. Did you really need that new T.V., car, shirt, shoes, etc. you bought? If you still had clothes, you didn’t need a new shirt or shoes. If you had a car, but it wasn’t pretty, you didn’t need a new one. As for the T.V., you don’t really need one of those at all. It’s not necessary to your survival.

All of these products were bought, by you the consumer, because you or the seller convinced you that it was a need – even though it was really a want. That’s how a consumerist society flourishes. So again, we say, you have to guide the buyer from the first step of clicking on a search result to the final step of clicking that last button on the buy.

The Final Word

It’s frustrating – for the client and for us – to see all that traffic disappear into the NetherNet. SEO brings traffic; it does not, necessarily, bring sales. Creating content that is buyer-value focused does. Creating calls to action that really mean something (buy now just means spend money) brings sales. SEO brings traffic so the sales are possible.

You don’t have to join the businesses suffering from too much traffic and not enough sales. Adjust your focus to included value-added content!

A new SEO tool has hit the streets, competing with thousands of others. As SEO consultants,  we’re always looking for that one tool – the one that will really help in measuring, managing and quantifying the work we do. Many SEO tools have promised the user will become a master, only to turn into something mundane.  Because of this, we went to the Microsite Masters website with a healthy dose of cynicism…

About this Tool Review

We often get tool review requests. This is one of them. However – and this is a big BUT -, we feel it’s important that you understand how our review process works. Long story short, we don’t do paid reviews. Those who ask already know that we’re going to give our real impressions. If, in our opinion, the tool is a waste of space or a copy, we’ll say so. What you’ll read is our opinion; your experience may be different.

Our honest reviews are geared toward offering you our insight, and the tool creators our feedback. We hope the owners of the tool can take some of these suggestions and consider their immediate impact to the user.

What about the Microsite Masters SERP Tracker?

Our tool reviews are done by walking through the process of use, from sign up to reports. We write down our thoughts, ideas, suggestions and so on. So, what about the Microsite Masters SERP Tracker? Let’s find out!

The Website – 4/5 ★★★★☆

• Pros: Pretty graphics, nice layout, pleasant sales video, user-friendly, clear calls to action. Microsite Masters offers flexible accounts that realistically follow the ebb and flow of client work; packages can be easily modified to higher or lower cost. As well, there are several levels, which makes it easier to find an affordable one.
• Cons: The first impression doesn’t give anything to make the site (and thus, the tool) stand out from the rest, so it’s easy to mix it in with all the other SEO tools out there. No trial feature (something Microsite Masters might consider).

The first thing any person is going to see is, of course, the website. For us, if a site doesn’t follow at least the basic structures of optimization and marketing, we’re not going to bother reviewing the tool. Maybe it’s snobbish, but you should at least have the basics.  Happily, this website has all the basics covered, including pretty graphs, reader-friendly content and a “we’ll solve all your problems” video.

One of the first things we actively look for once we’re on the site is tool pricing. In our experience, the price generally points out how valuable the creators really think the tool is. As well, it shows how much of an impression they think the trial or free version will make. This SERP tracker’s creators apparently think it will make a huge impression; cost ranges from free (most limited version) to $299.95/month (most robust version).

Promised Features

Microsite Masters promises healthy features that any SEO professional would love to have in their toolbox, if true. Unfortunately, they don’t offer a trial version of the more robust packages, which would give a healthy idea of the real product (you can see the feature list here and compare pricing plans here). While the upper echelon choices aren’t cheap by any means, it might be worth it for agencies.

The major promised features: accurate daily rank tracking, automated features to track dozens of campaigns and the ability to determine ROI and associated SERP impacts. It looks interesting, and the promised ease-of-use (laid out in pretty pictures under the commentary about features) makes us eager to try it out.

Side note: the site is easy to use and we appreciate the clear calls to action that are often missing on sites. However (and yes, it’s already been mentioned, but we feel strongly about it), we do feel that offering a trail version of the bigger packages would go a long way towards proving the tool.

Finally (hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, Microsite Masters), you might reconsider the placement of the “how to create campaigns” section. We almost missed it at the bottom of the features page.

Sign Up Process and Project Setup – 4/5 ★★★★☆

• Pros: Sign up is quick. Setting up a new project, including adding new keywords, search engines to track and websites is extremely easy. Projects can be deleted, but a failsafe popup stops you from unintentional deletion.
• Cons: Setting up a project the first time around can be confusing.

The sign up process was quick; it took less than two minutes from start to finish, with a stop off at our inbox to verify the email address. Nothing difficult or time consuming, which is a huge plus. We signed up with the free version, however, so the paid versions may take slightly longer.

We hit our first snag while setting up the project. During the account creation, the tool offers the ability to create a project name; we did so, reset the password to something we could remember, and then clicked “Dashboard”. The site promptly logged us out, presumably to sign in using the new password. Signing back in brought us to a different spot (that was as yet unfamiliar). It wasn’t a big deal, it only took a few seconds to realize where we needed to go next, but that’s a few seconds of insecurity with a new tool.

We’d already created a project name at the original prompt, so when we clicked the Project Wizard and it for a new project name, there was another moment of confusion. Having said that, we were able to add everything easily by treating it as a completely new project.

Once the project wizard was finished, we had two “Level343” projects: one from the original setup, and one from the Project Wizard. The unfinished one has a place at the bottom to add a website and rename the project. Missed those, probably because the headings are grey, at the bottom of the page, and blend with the background somewhat.

We deleted the initial (empty) project and went on. Projects are easy to delete, but have a warning pop up in case you click “delete” on accident. Good fail safe.

Side note: The areas for adding information would be easier to see if they were pulled up initially and pushed down as more entries were added.

SERP Tracker, Tool Use – 3/5 ★★★☆☆

• Pros: This SEO tool gives what it promises.
• Cons: User experience isn’t immediately intuitive. The volume column can be misleading. For ROI to track correctly, you have to make sure user error isn’t involved.

Okay, the project is created. Now what? There’s no immediate direction – just the user panel. We did what anybody would do and started clicking around. First click, Analyze SERP Changes.

Analyze SERP Changes

Oooo… This is different. “Add a change you’ve made to your site and we’ll show you the impact it has made!” It just got interesting; before, we were only surfing.  It just so happens that we posted a blog recently, so we added the details for that.

Analyze SERP Changes is also “Add Notes”, reachable through the side navigation. The “Links” dropdown lets you choose from links, onpage content, offpage content, new content and the ever broad “other”. Fill in the blanks with “More Detail” and “Amount of Change”. “Cost” is how much is cost you in dollars (by whole amount) or time (by hours).

The Notes feature is extremely interesting, and ties in later with the project. Clicking “continue” gives you a list of the key terms you chose to track; this connects your changes with the key term rankings, to see how your actions affected your SERPs. To be blunt, we’ve never seen this option before, and are looking forward to seeing the results.

There are a few things worth mentioning here, however, that caused the rating to drop:

One: When looking at this feature, our first thought was to put previous efforts into Notes. However, if the time of change is before tool started tracking, nothing will show up in the reports. On hindsight, it’s rather obvious that a tool can’t go back into time and track (at least, we’ve never seen one that could do so reliably), but, come on – isn’t your first instinct to shove as much information as possible into a tool?

Two: You can’t go back and edit a Note once it’s created. We’d love to see a Note Center, where you can edit, delete, or view a list of created notes, as a way to keep track of what you have and haven’t done for the whole project. It isn’t there yet, and that’s frustrating.

Keyword Tracking

Here, we hit another snag, although, again, it only took a little clicking around to get back on track. The main question is – where the heck are the keyword reports? How do you find them? Where’s the breadcrumb trail?

As it turns out, you have to click the project name again; we had already done that to reach the view you see above. While this may seem like a small thing, it does make it less intuitive. Experience says clicking on the same link will take you to the same place.

Side note: It might be more intuitive if the “keywords” section becomes highlighted instead of the “website” section.

We move on.

Although viewing the keyword results isn’t intuitive, adding more keywords to the campaign is. It’s quick – and you can add several at a time (think SEOMoz and Raven Tools interface for adding key terms). This is a definite plus for campaigns that need hundreds of terms tracked.

Digging into the Knowledge Base reveals another big plus. Microsite Masters doesn’t count three search engines as three different keywords against your tracking limit. In other words, if you want to track “SEO specialists” across Google, Yahoo and Bing in the U.S., it only counts as one key term.

A note on “Volume”

The “Volume” column can be misleading if you don’t read the Knowledge Base information. Volume is provided on an “exact match” basis, not a “phrase/broad match”. “The information provided within Microsite Masters from SEMRush is not a replacement for obtaining metrics from Google as its intended purpose is to sort keywords by search volume to quickly analyze data sets inside of the Microsite Masters interface.” So, unless you’re interested in exact match information, this number only serves a purpose for reordering and qualifying terms. If you see a low number for a term you thought was a high volume query, don’t freak. It’s just Microsite Masters.

Side note: This might be information better served in a tool tip format on the actual page.

SERP Tracking, Expanded View

The expanded view at keyword level is a handy feature. If, for example, you have a blog like we do, you may also have more than one page ranking for a given search query. Microsite Masters gives you the ability to dig down into the key terms, sharing information about the other pages that also rank for that term. As you can see from the screen shot, we have three pages that rank for “organic seo copywriting”.

We can automatically see the benefits to this level of detail. If, for example, we see a page that isn’t ranking, but is optimized and has been targeted for these terms, what looks like a bunch of numbers on the SERP tracker becomes actionable data. We may not be able to see why it isn’t working, but the creators don’t promise that.

Where Does the ROI Data Come In?

Throughout the walk through, we haven’t seen a single sign of ROI tracking. Where’s it hiding? –And what happened to those notes we added? Clicking on a keyword reveals the truth, and it’s awesome (click on the picture to see a bigger version).

Now, we didn’t spend the time to put in real numbers for the cost data, and the notes we put in weren’t necessarily targeted for “online brand marketing”. We just wanted to see how it worked – and here are the goodies.

Graphs – the graphs (by the way, the creators thoughtfully made the colors customizable) make it very easy to see what’s happening at a glance. We’re ranking high on Google for the term, while Yahoo and Bing don’t like us as well. The black line is our ROI, which is pulled from the notes we entered.

Ranking Analysis – This is the output of the notes, in a different format. Here, you can see what notes you’ve entered for a specific key term and delete them. You still can’t edit, but that’s just a nitpick. We found the commentary humorous – should have been more specific when we entered those darn notes:

“Over the past 4 days you have spent $0 and 3 hours trying to improve your rankings for the keyword ‘online brand marketing’. As a result of this work, your Google rankings have stayed the same, your Yahoo rankings have gone down 1 spots, and your Bing rankings have stayed the same.”

The “view impact” column will eventually update in 7-day intervals.

Ranking Table – Another big plus is that Microsite Masters updates the rankings every day. Quite simply, it’s like watching your SERP rankings in real time. Again, we can automatically see benefits here – not the least of which is this: as soon as your rankings start falling, you can add another blog, link, etc. targeted towards the key term in order to stay on top. Very nice!

Finally, we also have the SEO Scoreboard. It doesn’t really show much for us – we only entered 15 key terms after stepping into one of the bigger versions to test. This isn’t available to the free version, due to the fact that it requires more than 10 terms to work properly. However, you can see the applications for those with a big list of key terms. It isn’t “prettified”; there aren’t any pictures, pats on the back or anything else. It’s a raw showing of which keywords are doing well and which ones need rescuing.

How Microsite Masters SERP Tracking Tool Lines Up – 4/5 ★★★★☆

Frankly, the SERP tracking tool still has some issues, as noted in the review. However, none of them are big enough to make this tool unusable. It delivers on what the creators promise, to a very large extent. Most of the issues are with the user interface, and can be ironed out within a few minutes. If you just want to see how your site is performing for a few keywords and don’t care about printing reports, the free version will do fine.

-Which brings us to the fact that some of the promised features are not available in the free version. For example, exporting results in CSV, PDF reports and so on aren’t available. As well, the free version only allows 10 keywords, so the SEO scoreboard won’t work.

In our opinion, that’s something that should be considered in the site’s content. These are blanket promises with no caveats. While the reports aren’t needed for anyone other than a professional with clients, the SEO scoreboard might come in handy for small businesses with a DIY mind frame. Signing in to find out that the scoreboard wasn’t available was disappointing.

SEO professionals and agencies may shrug and say “well, I can get most of that from this or that tool,” and they might be right to some extent. However – this is the first tool we’ve come across that compares actions to results in an easy to digest manner. As well, most of the features are seldom available in a single tool.

The creators try to add 3-5 new countries every month, and create updates based on “client-sourcing”. The ideas come directly from the users. The Notes Center that we’d love to see is in the planning, and they’re currently looking for more options to take the public results sharing to the next level. They’re openly interested on what we’d like to see, and work to improve the product.

Once some of these features/functions are available, we fully expect to be able to rank the Microsite Masters SERP Tracking tool at a full 5 stars!

Visit the Microsite Masters site, browse the features and snag a free version now to test… guaranteed, some of you will be grabbing one of the premium versions!

So, did everyone have a good brouhaha good time for New Year’s? Are you ready to delve into 2012’s planning, marketing and magic? I don’t know about you, but around the office here, we’re ready to do more with less. We’ve taken a step back – but not a backwards step. – And if that isn’t enough double speak, I don’t know what is.

2012 Happy New Year

It’s 2012 – Are You Ready?

This is our 4th post of 2012. As far as the Mayans are concerned, this is the end. In the technology world, some people are predicting (rightly so) the year of the Mobile. Others have embraced QR codes as the second coming. Times are changing, my friends.

We even *gasp* went so far as to DARE not send out a blog post for one day (whether it will affect our readership or not remains to be seen). However, after a busy year, it was time to refuel the energy levels and decide how, what stories, which lessons and so on make sense for 2012.

Transitioning into the New Year

If you have a small company or a Fortune 500 and have yet to grasp that social has to be a part of your compass, brand, energy, purpose and (yes) daily language, you’ve been sleeping under a rock. We deal in a world of language and communication. Like it or not, text and keywords are how you, we, the world, formulate important concepts.

Yet, those concepts change, simply because life changes. We then have to formulate new words, new key terms and new text to define those changes.

For this particular blog post, we’re going to look back over the years at our most popular posts and what they’ve offered our readers. What concepts have changed? Experience leads to innovation and change of thought; do we think differently at the end of the year than we did at the beginning?

Are Social Media Tools Relevant to SEO?

Written in 2009, we covered a topic that was cropping up all over the place: social media and SEO. The end conclusion of the article was, “While social media in and of itself isn’t that helpful with SEO, the resulting links are.”

We’ve seen incredible results from a mixed campaign of SEO and social. Social seems to act as a magnifier of marketing efforts, due to the inherent viral nature of sharing. After the past two years in search, algo changes, G+ in Google, Facebook in Bing and so on, the picture is becoming much clearer.

In short, SEO and social media need to have seamless integration. It’s no longer about “the resulting links”. Individuals without websites are showing up in the results pages because of a Google Plus or Facebook profile. Some business owners have made one network or the other their home base, as it were.

Seamless Integration

The takeaway for you: If you’re using social media and have a website presence, make sure you connect the dots. The lines are fading between social media and SEO; having those connections ensures that you don’t lose out on your marketing efforts.

Merging Keyword Strategies and Effective Copywriting

No matter how you slice it, you need keywords, and this article does a fairly good job of explaining that. However, a lot of things have changed since we started the SEO Article Archive – patents, signals, Panda, copyright issues, citations… Because of this, the understanding of how keywords work needs to be clearer. (Read: Semantics and Relevance: Even Keywords Need Support Sometimes)

Key words and phrases work much like marketing words do in advertising. The next ad you listen to on the radio, pay attention to how many times they say certain words, and which words they repeat. The repetition of these words send signals to your brain, much like using keywords sends signals to the search engines.

The takeaway for you: We’ve written several articles since this time about how to effectively merge keywords into your site, copy and campaigns. Again, they connect the dots between your topic and those searching. Make sure that the terms you’re using are actually relevant to what you’re trying to convey and accomplish with your site.

Morphing Facebook

When we wrote this, Facebook had made an attempt to take over Twitter’s traffic (say that three times fast). They’d changed a lot in order to do this. Obviously, it failed. Odd, then, that they’re doing the same thing now that G+ is out.

How much have they changed over the past few years? We can’t even count the ways: ticker on the side, FB timeline, sharing abilities, lists… it goes on (and on, and on).

They’re the number one social platform. They have a larger user base than most countries have people. People use them for business and personal, fun and work. Why can’t they be happy with that? Ah, c’est la vie. Facebook will always be Facebook…

Always Another Platform

The takeaway for you: There’s always going to be another social platform; there’s always going to be the next best thing and the next shiny tool. Unless you have many clones, there’s no way you can keep up with all of them. Don’t try; pick the ones you can build a community on, and stick with them… unless they turn into MySpace (in which case, run).

You’ve already established your community and your story… why would you stop and start all over again.  Don’t be a foolish; learn how to listen and grow your audience.

“Big Brother” Google Step’s on SEOs

Before you ask, no – we don’t feel any different. We’ve seen example after example over the past few years that show us how Google feels about our profession. So what’s another year without fear in the SEO community?

Google isn’t all cherries and ice cream. There are enough lawsuits targeting them around the world that they should be enough to give you a taste of reality.

The latest includes things like moving search to https. Oh, sure, they call it a privacy issue; yet, we know they’re still tracking the key terms. They’re just being selective about to whom they’re giving that data to: i.e. the advertisers. As well, they’re testing PPC now, giving people the ability to fill out a “request a call” form from the SERPS. In other words, they’re trying to make it so no one ever leaves the search results pages.

The takeaway for you:Google is in business for Google. Before you put every cent, and every effort, into marketing with Google, remember that. Also, remember that they have control over your account; if you do something against their terms (whether you do it knowingly or not), they can shut your account down. Be very careful to observe the rules.

Google Is Always Watching You

How to Write an SEO Article

This is a good old stand by and, although we’ve written several updated and in depth versions, it’s still one of those good “foundational” articles. Having said that, however, it’s written from the article submission frame of mind… and that, friends, professional SEO specialists, and readers, has changed drastically.

For one, many article submission sites were hit by the Panda update, which pointed to a dearth of quality content. As well, many have lost their appeal to the visitor, lessening the impact that article submission once had.

Today, we look more towards content marketing (in truth, it’s a lot like article submission… but… not). With content marketing, your articles are written with an actual site and that site’s audience in mind (for example, guest posting for our blog). Rather than submit the same article to umpteen different directories, like many have done in the past, content marketing is a single, well written – nay, crafted – piece of art that you hang up in another person’s gallery.

The takeaway for you: Content marketing is more involved than article marketing, but can also bring better returns in terms of traffic, authority, publicity and, yes, ranking. Pay close attention to the sites you visit in your industry. If they offer guest article spots, give your site a marketing and publicity boost; offer a crafted piece of art!

Cutting It Short, Because Time is of the Essence

We were going to cover our top 10 posts of all time. We stopped at five because 1) we’re long winded and we’ve hit our self-imposed maximum word count and 2) because your time is of the essence.

We can’t do with you what we normally do with clients. With clients, we sit down and talk about their project – and then we shut up and listen. Since we can’t do that, we share with you what we do, and give you a starting point. Therefore, it’s time for your homework assignment – and since you’re busy running a company, you’re going to need all the time you can grab to complete it.

Create Your Masterpiece

Look at your top posts, landing pages and guest blogs and compare them with the “you” you are today. Were you able to tell your story? Can people say three things about you just by following you and reading? Have you branded yourself?

What are some of the things you can take away from them? What are some of the lessons you can share with your readers? What has changed since those top posts were written? This is good practice for you, in terms of paying attention to the content you’re putting out; you’ll be surprised at the amount of information and ideas that occur to you.

Our 2012 predictions, by the way, since everyone who’s anyone is giving them…

The world is not going to end. SOPA will have forced some underground groups to get a nice network. The housing market will still suck, and the 1% will still ignore reality. We, however, will keep steadfast and continue to shoot with both barrels while taking names along the way!!

It started two years ago, back in 2010, with the idea of honoring the women in SEO. Top SEO Women of 2010 was our way of supporting the ten women listed, such as Donna Fontenot, Dana Lookadoo, Debra Mastaler,  and Ann Smarty. They’re women we know, interact with and are friends with. Gabriella left a closer, saying that she might add to the list later. – And then something happened…

Top SEO Women took off, and turned into something more than a list of great women. Top SEO Women of 2011 received even better reception, and listed women like Lyena Solomon, Melissa Fach, and Debra Mastaler. We went a step further, developing a logo for our new project.  –Yet, in the comments, people were mentioning how their choices would have been this person, or those people. Some, we’d never even heard of.

An idea began to form – why not use Top SEO Women to bring other SEO women to light? Debra Mastaler, for example, is very well known, as are the other women listed above. What about the others? Although SEO is (or seems to be) a male dominated industry, that doesn’t necessarily mean the only female optimizers are the ones we know about, does it?

For 2012, we opened up Top SEO Women to nominations. Readers obliged, to the point that we had to stop at thirty nominations. Over 1400 responded during the polling period – from where this all started, as a short list of women we knew, that’s a fantastic jump. We’re extremely pleased that it’s done so well, and appreciate the responses, nominations, comments and votes from everyone involved.

2012’s Top Women in SEO

SEO has evolved since its inception, and that truth is pointed out by the list of women in SEO who were nominated for this year’s awards. Included in the list were link builders, copywriters, bloggers and more – all who contribute to the industry in some way. All of the nominees are excellent at what they do, and we’re honored to have been able to include them in the nomination list.

With all that said, here are the top women in SEO for 2012, as voted by the public at large:

Heather Lloyd-Martin, Third place winner

Prizes: 3 month membership with the SEO Training Dojo, $50 Amazon gift card

For someone who “fell” into copywriting, Heather Lloyd-Martin has come a long way. She started as an advertising sales manager, occasionally writing copy for clients. Although sales was in her blood (her family also had a sales background), writing copy was an aside.

By 1997, Heather’s copywriting skills had greatly improved, and she started writing for websites as a freelancer. That was the end of the story – or it would have been, if she hadn’t been on the Women Talk Business discussion list. Jill Whalen contacted her to discuss integrating keywords into website copy, and SEO copywriting was born.

A first gen search marketer, Heather is a 20+ year marketing veteran. She’s the CEO of SuccessWorks, and trains corporate in-house SEO copywriters. She’s a board member of American Writers and Artists Inc. Online and on the advisory board for Search Engine Marketing Association of Portland (SEMpdx), as well as a frequent speaker for SMX (Search Marketing Expo) and other notable search conferences. She also developed the first SEO copywriting certification program, and has become one of the most well known SEO copywriters in the industry.

Follow Heather for great insights into creating strong copy:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• SuccessWorks, SEO Copywriting Blog

Mariachiara Marsella, Second Place Winner

Prizes: 6 month membership with the SEO Training Dojo, $75 Amazon gift card

For the past 9 years, Mariachiara Marsella has immersed herself in all things web marketing, having been a copywriter, analyst and now a full time SEO.

She began as a local newspaper editor in 1999, but after winning a short story writing competition in 2002, turned toward writing full time. By 2003, she found herself writing web content, and becoming more intrigued by optimization and search.

Since then, Mariachiara hasn’t looked back. She dived into web marketing, gaining as much information as she could. Intelligent and a quick learner, she went from writing web content to becoming a web analyzer, to a web marketing manager in four years.

In 2007, Mariachiara started working for Fullsix, in Milan, as an SEO specialist. Two years later, she was teaching SEO and web marketing at Delta Comunicazione in Rome. Since 2010, she’s been the online marketing manager for PMI Servizi, creating SEO/SEM strategies, coordinating teams of web programmers, developers and designers, and, in general, doing what all good SEOs do – taking her clients to the top.

Follow Mariachiara for great insights on the Italian digital market:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• PMI Servizi blog

Eren McKay, First Place Winner

Prizes: 12 month membership with the SEO Training Dojo, $100 Amazon Gift Card

Eren Mckay started college for physical therapy but decided that it got in the way of taking care of her 3 children. So she put that on hold for a while. When her kids started growing up, her attention turned towards creating an online business.

She didn’t want to be trapped in a 9 to 5 job and realized that the way to earn the freedom that she desired for herself and her family was to learn SEO. She spent countless hours studying, researching, testing and implementing SEO tactics in order to find out what truly worked and would continue to get results in the future.

Knowing how to rank pages and multiply those efforts through outsourcing and systems would enable her to create a passive income business model. This would eventually give her more time and freedom to focus on what really matters: her friends and family.

She currently has a personal blog called Embracing Home, where she sometimes writes when she finds the time to do so. However her main focus is on creating profitable niche sites.

Follow Eren McKay for great insights into the world of online marketing:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google +
• Embracing Blogging

Honorable Mentions

We can’t leave out the rest of the top ten; it takes a lot of work to be in SEO, and these women should definitely be recognized for their work:

• Sadie Sherran, from SEO Creative
• Lindsay Wassell from Keyphraseology
• Leslie Carruthers from The Search Guru
• Julie Cheung from Manual Link Building
• Raquel Franco from SEO Femenino
• Maria Pia De Marzo with Web in Fermento
• Vanessa Fox from Nine by Blue

Our thanks to the SEO Training Dojo for their prize contribution, and congratulations to the winners of Level343’s Top Women in SEO for 2012!

Logo for 2012

For the Top SEO Women of this year who would like to sport the logo, you can click on the image, then right click and save as. We provided the highest resolution; feel free to set the size you need for your site. If you need a .png version, please contact us. For those who would like to support the Top SEO Women with some link love, please link to this post. Thank you for your support!

Next Year

Last year, we added a logo. This year, we added a couple of prizes. Top Women in SEO is still growing from infancy, however, and we’re already looking forward to next year. We’re currently working on refining the nominating and voting process, and all that “rules and regulations” stuff to ensure a good run. If your company is interested in sponsoring the Top Women in SEO 2013, please contact Level343

Web design can be a pretty complicated process, especially for business owners with limited experience in the field. A design that works has to reflect the values of the organization, share appropriate information, and make sense—aesthetically and practically—to the user. Simply put, you want a website filled with quality content that can be easily navigated and looks good.

A Perfect Day

Think about how you perceive a website for the first time. When you click from a search result to the site, your first impression comes from…what? Your first impression is a visual one. The same is true for your visitors.

We infuse meaning into colors, shapes, and the placement of elements. Colors—or lack thereof—reach out to you and give you an idea of what to expect from that particular site. Your eyes scan over images, headings, logos, navigation, colors; your brain processes this information in milliseconds. You may not realize it, but in the space of those few seconds, your brain has weighed, measured, and pronounced judgment on the site. It’s really not something you can stop from doing.

So…what impression does your design give your visitors? Is it professional? Does it truly reflect your values? Is what you offer clearly visible and your information easy to find?

Is your website design giving a good impression?

You may think you have a great website design; it makes you feel good. It swells your heart with pride. Is what you envisioned doing the job? How do you find out? Fortunately, there are several tools to help you answer this question. We’ve listed some of them below, but this list is by no means the end all and be all of design testing tools.

Browser size. You know what your site looks like to you; do you know what it looks like to your visitors? One of the many things to take into consideration is the size of the browsers your visitors are using. Websites can look completely different in different browser sizes. View Like Us and Google Browser Labswill show you how much of your site can be seen.

Good Impressions Do Count

What sizes do my visitors use? Check your analytics. In Google Analytics, you can do this by clicking Visitors>Screen Resolutions. Once you know your visitors’ most commonly used browser size, you can optimize your website for that size.

Contrasting Colors. Color choice is incredibly important, especially when deciding font colors vs. the site background. Just because you think light blue looks good on dark blue doesn’t mean your visitors will. As well, you need to remember that some people are color blind or may have other visual issues that affect their ability to read your site (like macular degeneration that makes it difficult to read light letters on a dark background). Your design colors need to meet accessibility guidelines for this. Check My Colours can help you find some potential issues in terms of color contrast, while VisCheck (a work in progress) can give you an idea of what your site would look like to those with color blindness.

Is your color choice negatively affecting your visitors? The only way to know is to ask and/or test. Find the Perfect Colors for Your Websiteat Vandelay Design has a large list of color tools you can use to create other palettes for your site (or keep your main color and change the supporting colors). You can then offer visitors different options by:

Perception is 100% Reality

1. Using a website optimizer program for A/B/C/D testing.
2. Uploading to a place like Usabilla, which allows individuals to comment on your site design.
3. Uploading your color schemes as images and letting visitors vote on them.

Browser compatibility. Some people will tell you, “Technology is growing to the point that a site will look the same across all browsers with no problem. Worrying about browser compatibility is a waste of time now.” It’s B.S. The only way browser compatibility is no longer a concern is if you don’t care what the site looks like on a different browser.

Internet Explorer is famous for its inability to play well with others. However, sometimes it’s Firefox that acts up. Or Opera. Or Safari. To ensure a seamless experience across all modern browsers, it’s always best to check your site against browsers other than the one you’re using. Adobe Browser Labs, Browser Shots, and others allow you to see your site as your visitors might see it.

What browsers are my visitors using? Again, you can check this through your analytics program. With Google Analytics, click Visitors>Browsers. Pay attention to the most commonly used browsers and optimize your site for them. If you have a high number of mobile visits, you might consider crafting a mobile version of your site to support this.

Is Your Website Usable?

Website Usability

Usability is extremely important. Not only do your visitors need to understand what your site is about, but the site also needs to be intuitive—that is, easy to use. You can’t judge this yourself; you know how the pages are set up and what you expect people to do. You have to learn how others will view—and use—your website.

When a site is designed, the creator has to understand the difference between creativity and stupidity. One of our favorite examples of usability mistakes happens when the shopping car icon is placed in a spot that makes no sense to the user. If you put a shopping cart down in the left hand corner, it’s almost a guarantee that your visitors will be frustrated by the inability to find it without searching. A frustrated user will leave your site completely.

Is your website frustrating to use?

How do you find out if you’re having this problem? One of the things we really like about Google Analytics is the ability to find out where users go after landing on a page. For a number of sites we’ve come across, users landed on the home page—and then clicked on an image or link that, essentially, just reloaded the home page.

In Google Analytics, you can view user paths by clicking Content>Top Content>Entrance Sources and choosing the page you want to see. You’ll see the previous and post pages for the one you’re looking at. If the information you retrieve indicates user confusion (such as “started at home page, then viewed home page, and ended up on the home page”), you know you’re in trouble. If you see a lot of back and forth between pages (services>home>services>home), your visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for. Then it’s time to rethink your page.

You can’t just jump in and start changing things, however. You have to have insight first. 10 Usability Testing Tools for Startups gives you several options for usability testing. Other options include:

• Loop 11
• SMT – Simple Mouse Tracking is a simple tool that lets you track your visitors’ mouse movements.
• Click Density
• NavFlow
• IntuitionHQ

Get The Right Tools

More Tools of the Trade

Google offers several tools to help you understand your audience. Google Analytics is a free tool that will show you where your visitors are coming from and the links they click. It’s rather simple to use and adequate for most users. Another great feedback tool from Google is Talk Chatback. This is a live chat device that lets you hear directly from your visitors. Your customer service staff can ask questions and get feedback on your site straight from the source. (This also gives you an opportunity to convert the visit to a sale!) You may also want to consider adding a Google internal search option to your site. This allows you the chance to track what your visitors are searching for and adjust your content accordingly.

Customer surveys are another excellent tool for getting feedback directly from your consumers. You can ask your visitors questions about their experiences on your site and find out what kind of content will be most useful for them. KISSInsights and Survey Monkey are free platforms for creating surveys on your site.

Web designers may create beautiful websites, but they have to understand your audience before that pretty site will do any good. You can do your part by using these tools to take an honest look at your site and how it is being perceived by the most important people—the end users.

So, you’ve finally decided you want to learn all you can about SEO. Now what? Where do you go? How do you know that where you are is the right place to be? The last thing you want to do is waste your time and money buying into a bunch of SEO bull. So… where do you go to get the real low down? You find a a room full of SEO and patent geeks! Of course, when you first step in, it’s going to sound like a foreign language. You might hear things like:

The Long & Winding Road

“…it can be a pain in the rear, but it’s good for sessionized data. Log data – not so good.”

“Splice that keyword data into declines and trends; you can see what new words peeps are looking for and get some kind of direction…”

“…like the source, internal, external… whether or not it was an apparent query refinement…”

You’ll spend a lot of time with a puzzled look on your face but, eventually, the light bulb comes on and it all starts to make sense. Because, you see, the only way to really learn SEO is to pick the brains of the warriors…

SEO Reading: Lots of Meals, but It’s Mostly Just Chicken

In SEO Fast Food: I’ll Take #1 Ranking with That, but Hold the Fries, Gabriella wrote about the various types of SEO companies in relation to the ratings of restaurants. As informavores on the hunt for bite-sized snacks of information, you’re looking for steak. Yet, a lot of blogs and articles out there, no matter how they’re dressed up to look like steak, are really just… chicken.

A few bring out the good meals and fine wine when it comes to information for beginners, such as the Google Webmaster Central Blog and Bing Webmaster Center Blog, but what about when you’ve read all you can? Where do you go next? Where ARE the rooms of conversating search professionals, geeks and pundits, filled with prodigious commentary unintelligible to the common mortal?

Where’s the Beef? Where the SEO Experts Go

If asked where the experts go to get industry news, discuss topics, read about search patents and so on, you’ll get a list of places to visit. What you’ll also have is an (almost) absolute guarantee that these places will only be serving the tastiest, most filling meals for your informational taste buds. When taking the advice of the experts on where to go, however, keep a few things in mind:

• Don’t mind the mess – these sites aren’t always going to be pretty. Some search geeks are so obsessed with search; they’re completely lost when it comes to design. They’re like the absent-minded professors of the search world.
• Carry a dictionary – or, at the very least, have search up and ready. If you think “long-tail” refers to a species of animal, you’ll be wearing out your search engine of choice before you’re through the first article.
• Take small bites – you WILL get overwhelmed if you try to digest years’ worth of accumulated knowledge on optimization. Read a little every day and chew slowly.
• Ask questions – because you’ll need the answers to gain further understanding. Questions are your saving grace, and most (if not all) are willing to answer them.

With that said, here’s a short list of sites for beginning to advanced optimization learning:

Search Engine Land – Without a doubt, SEL is a top notch online publication. Here, you can find tons of information and news on the extremely broad topic of internet marketing. Categories include: SEM, SEO, PPC, Social Media, How-To’s, Google & Search and Indepth Analysis. SEL is well worth the bookmarking and daily intake.

SEO Book – Created, managed, and mostly written by Aaron Wall, SEOBook is a comprehensive blog full of search geekiness. You may not always agree with what Aaron has to say, but he’ll always make you think. Warning – he fills his posts up with handy, informative links. You could, quite possibly, get lost in the reading.

SEO By the Sea – Owner/Author Bill Slawski is a true search patent geek. He’s the guy optimizers go to when they don’t have the time to search the patents themselves. The amount of pure information found on this site -in terms of search and SEO –  is nothing less than phenomenal. When you’re ready to advance in SEO, this is the place to bookmark.

Webmaster World – The tagline says “News and Discussion for the Web Professional”, and it doesn’t lie. Code, content, presentation, hardware and OS technologies, analytics, ecommerce… Webmaster World has it all. Best of all, it’s a heavily moderated forum, and you’ll always find someone in there to talk shop with.

And Then There’s the SEO Training Dojo

Most of the above places are blogs; a few have forums.  Yet, none are quite like the  SEO Training Dojo. On many a professional’s site or blog, you’ll either find a link to the Dojo under “Places to Visit” or some form of a “Proud Member” badge. In fact, you’ll find the SOSG (Seriously Obsessed Search Geek) badge at the bottom of this blog. The SEO Dojo is chock full of people on the road to becoming SEO warriors: beginners, advanced optimizers and top notch experts alike.

SEO Dojo Members

This isn’t just a training platform, however. Within the Dojo are hundreds of members who love what they do and want to share, engage and grow with like-minded people. If you’re interested in really digging into optimization, this is the room full of SEO and patent geeks. When you enter the Dojo, you’ll learn about SEO whether you want to or not. It’s kind of a “survival” kind of thing, because you’re in the ring with people like:

David Harry – AKA the Gypsy. The Dojo’s creator and an original SOSG, Dave is buried in all things search. He has more patent information stored in his head than Microsoft has in their whole portfolio. He’s been involved in design and search for over 12 years, pandering to his obsessions of information retrieval, machine learning, research papers, patents and anything else he can get his hands on.

Terry Van Horne – AKA Webmaster T. Terry’s been buried in the search world since… well, since before there was a search world. You can find some of his earlier writings as far back as 1997 (the year Google Search was created), if not further. Founder of SEOPros.org, Terry is one of the original SEOs (OS), passionate about industry standards and contrary as they come!

Debra Mastalar – President of Alliance-Link and a practitioner for almost 12 years, Debra is one of the most well known link builders in the industry; she’s also one of Level343’s Top SEO Women of 2011. Her words of wisdom have been shared at SMX (Search Marketing Expo) and SES (Search Engine Strategies Conference), and she’s provided several training sessions for SES and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). If you’re having problems with your link building, Debra’s the woman to read, follow and otherwise learn from.

Anthony Verre – AKA the Milwaukee SEO. Tony is the co-author of eProfitability, an eBook on understanding the search landscape for C-Level executives and upper level management. He holds Qualifications for Google AdWords Individual and Google Analytics Individual; individuals with these qualifications have to retest every 18 months to retain them. He’s been in search for at least six years, is a definite SOSG, and as nice as they come – though extremely blunt. Don’t ask his opinion if you aren’t prepared to receive it!

Barry Adams – A regular contributor to State of Search and Search News Central, as well as the Senior Internet Marketer for Search at Pierce Communications, Barry’s another Dojo member who’s been involved in the Internet since before it was cool. Of course, SEO was an afterthought until about 11 years ago, but as these things go, he can still be considered an early adopter. Barry’s a Dutchman, SOSG, Mensan and top notch SEO; he swears a lot, but we’re pretty sure it’s not his fault.

All-in-One Community, Marketplace and SEO Shop

The Dojo is a thriving community; it’s also a strong community, where B.S. and ego is (mostly) left at the door. It’s devoted to search, and everything involved in search. In the dedicated chat room, we’ve discussed Google, the impact of social signals, Panda, key terms, link targets and too many other topics to name. (If you want to hear the things we complain about, you can always visit the SEO Bullshit blog – the optimizer’s place to rag and rage. Be warned, though… the language ain’t pretty.)

Along the way, we’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of professionals in our industry and make great contacts. For many a professional, these contacts sometimes become co-workers on various projects; no optimizer can do it all, and the SEO Dojo is excellent pool of qualified resources. Copywriters, marketers, patent geeks, optimizers, coders and any other profession you can name come together to learn, grow and produce search geek goodness.

As an added benefit, many of these people are also the creators of a number of tools, used by SEO professionals and beginners alike. Because of their belief in the Dojo and enjoyment of the community, many have become sponsors, providing a slew of tools, products and services at discounts for Pro Dojo Members. At last count, the discounts added up to over $1000 in savings, and the amount is still growing.

Heavy Resource Lists

Among all the goodies offered by the Dojo, you’ll find an extensive video library encompassing all things search. You also find a long list of tools used by a number of practitioners, productivity resources, links, articles and much, much more. It is, after all, called the SEO Training Dojo. No matter what level of learning you have, there’s something for everyone.

A Discount for You

We have a disclaimer to make. We realized we couldn’t say enough good things, so we did the next best thing. As careful as we are about recommending and supporting sites, products, services and so on, we’ve become one of the Dojo’s sponsors. Yes, we’re that proud to be members of this great community.

With that said, the SEO Training Dojo recently celebrated its 2^nd birthday, and we wanted to share with our readers. Until December 1^st, you can buy a Dojo membership for 25% off, using the coupon code LEVEL343. We hope you take advantage of the discount to find out about this wonderful, thriving community of search!

*Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement, and there are no affiliate links within this article. We do not receive money or special privileges from the SEO Dojo for our support. This article is simply a show of support for a program that we feel is well worth the time, money and effort involved to be a participating member. With rare exceptions (a few Amazon links to books we have read and recommend), Level343 does not provide affiliate marketing links on this site, and has no plans to do so in the future. Thank you.

I realize it’s been a while since our last rant on anything. Lucky for us, I happen to have one all ready to go. It’s been stewing for quite awhile (since last Thursday), running around in my head and gathering more fuel for the fire. To be honest, I’m glad I’ve planned the post for today – it gave me the weekend to reread, look it over, (make some changes) and clean up the cuss words. :P

But You Just Can

As the title says, today’s rant, brought to you special from Level343, is about SEO, inbound marketing in general, and critical thinking.

I Was Enjoying a Quiet Thursday Morning When…

This post came across one of my social networks: Using Google+ Ripples to Connect with Influencers. Go ahead; read it. I’ll wait.

“Let the ooh’s and ahh’s begin,” I thought. Everyone is going to flock to the G Plus Ripples to do like the man says and “connect with influencers” (eye roll). How completely fab that the world is finally catching up with our way of doing things – including Google, it seems.

HEY! Did Your Fancy New Tool Just Crap On My Industry?

I know what people are going to think. A lot of people will look at G+ Ripples and think, “Great! I won’t need an inbound marketer anymore. This fancy new tool Google just put out is the answer to all my problems!” How do I know this? It’s the public answer every time. Just for fun here is a ripple in action. Actually, it’s really a funny video, so take the time to share with your readers on G+. While you’re at it add Level343 Google + page if you want. See once again, I digress…

Most people are looking for the fast way to make a quick buck, or, in Internet terms, a fast way to get results. Every new tool that comes out is jumped on like a male dancer at a bachelorette party.

Come on, people! So you want to do things yourself. So you don’t want to strain your budget hiring someone. Okay – fine, fine. But use some common sense! These programs and products can’t provide the one thing you desperately need for any business endeavor; they can’t provide the human element!

Communication is the new currency

A program can’t do your critical thinking for you. If you’re letting programs make business decisions for you rather than taking the time to make those decisions yourself, you’re… well, I can’t think of a nice way to say it.

A little later, I came across another article that helped calm me down (just a little bit): mostly because it went along the lines of the human element. A PubCon write up by David Angotti talks about the presentation Greg Boser (SVP of Search, BlueGlass Interactive) gave. David writes:

“There is an increasing amount of data that shows a shift from “traditional” SEO to social (human engagement) signals. Google recently acquired PostRank, a metric similar to PageRank for social, which indicates how important human engagement is to the Google algorithm. Part of the reason that Google is trying to do a better job of analyzing human engagement is due to people sharing links through social networks instead of blogs or sites.”

No way! Really?? SEO is shifting to human engagement signals? – And did you notice that Google is trying to do a better job? Why are they trying? Because they haven’t managed it yet! In fact, that’s why their Ripples project “is still experimental”. Yeah, I’m going to base a lot of business decisions off of an experimental tool.

I apologize for fuming. Prepare for more to come.

Pepper Is a Seasoning, Not a Method of Action

Pepper SEO... seriously?

I don’t care what you’ve been told; keywords don’t make the conversions. You think you can pepper your site with some keywords, the pearly gates will open while the angels sing the hallelujah chorus and buyers will just flock in? Sure, your numbers may reflect stronger traffic, but your conversion won’t – because your language still sucks. You didn’t think about the readers, and you have to. At the end of the day, they’re the ones who are going to buy, not the search engines.

A site peppered with keywords doesn’t look like anything other than what it is: a site peppered with keywords.

-And blogs. You think you can pepper your blog with any old content and build a readership? You can’t! I came across a blog post (from someone I’m now currently ashamed to say I follow) and the post was full of errors. I don’t mean a little spelling error or a few grammatical errors. I mean big, glaring errors where the apostrophes converted to the diamond question mark!

You know what that shows? It shows you don’t care. It shows you don’t give a crap about your business, your reputation or your readers. The people on the other side of your monitor are going to say the same thing I did. “Wow, they didn’t even take the time to edit the content before hitting the publish button!”

You know the saying that became popular after Forest Gump said it? “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” This seems to be the philosophy growing online. It’s a load of crap.

When you buy a box of chocolates, you’re going to look at the packaging first. Yeah, you know what you’re going to get. Once you open the box, you have that package cover that tells you what each piece is. There are no surprises in that box of chocolates unless you didn’t look at the package.

Your site is the package for your business, brand, products and services, people. If that package has crap content, peppered keywords and shows a lack of care, that’s not a box of chocolates I’m going to bother to buy. You don’t care, I don’t care.

I’m Taking a Deep Breath…

Talk to the hand!

Okay. As you can tell, I’m a bit irked, here. As someone who’s done all this SEO – the research, the audits, the onpage and offpage optimization, the link building, the copywriting and marketing – I know you don’t just pull these ideas out of your nether regions. We research who our client’s readers are. We listen to them talk about their business. We gain information and data before we ever lift a finger in actual implementation. If they don’t have any kind of traffic analytics, we require at least 30 days to get that tracking up and gather data.

The point is we have pride in our work. We pay attention to what we’re doing. We’re careful in the things we recommend. We take the time to think before we act. Sometimes, we miss errors, we’re only human, but we do try.

Now really – is it too much to ask that others do the same?

While performing some much needed inspiration reconnaissance, we came across the title of this article as a search term in our analytics. What an interesting thought – the idea that a business owner might want internet marketing without a website. How odd, and yet, how enticing an idea to explore!

Usually, people that come to us either have a website and want to market it, or need a website and want to market it. Either way, a website is involved. Whoever was searching our site for internet marketing for brick and mortar businesses gave us a whole meal of food for thought.

Today, we’re going to explore the possibilities, based on the current sites and technologies available to anyone. Follow along, if you will. You may find some ideas of use to you that can be adapted to fit your own business!

Are Websites a Thing of the Past? Er…

As soon as this thought crossed our minds, the obvious answer followed. No, websites are very much a necessary part of many businesses. However, there are some drawbacks to owning a professional website presence:

Cost of hosting: While you can use a free hosting service, and those services work well for hobby sites, they aren’t recommended for business entities. Therefore, the cost of hosting is a factor, and it can range from as little as $60 a year to as much as $200 and up (depending on your business’ online needs).

Cost of site development: If you aren’t using a content management system (CMS), the upkeep on a site can be extremely expensive through the year. A CMS takes initial development costs for the design, but usually doesn’t take a lot coding upkeep after that. Still, you’re paying for the cost of professional content development to make sure your site is ready for converting visitors.

Cost of maintenance: This could be time, money, or both. A website takes a lot of work to maintain, whether you do it yourself or hire someone to take care of that maintenance. If you hire someone, you better make sure you have a well thought-out budget set aside for this work.

Now that we’ve explored some of the drawbacks of a website (mainly because we website hussies have to pretend we don’t need one in order to step out of the box), let’s look at the possibilities!

Creating a “Website Free” Online Presence (Phew!)

We don’t need no stinkin’ website! But how are we going to market our brick and mortar without one? Well, like any good SEOs, we’re going to look at the search engines first. What are search engines offering the business owner?

Google Places for Business: As the number one search engine, it behooves business owners not to skip over the Big Daddy Google. Happily enough, the search engine provides an online business card just for your business.

Enter your name, address, and phone number (NAP), upload photos and videos (if you have a YouTube account), enter the hours you’re open, and business categories. You can also enter additional details, such as whether parking is available and what brands you carry, etc. Google Places for Business is very easy to set up, and quick.

Bing Business Portal (BETA): Yes, Google is big, but leaving out other search engines and putting all your eggs in the G basket would be a large mistake. It’s not as easy to get into the BBP as it is to set up a Google Place page; you’ll have to jump through some hoops. However, the results are worth it.

One of the things BBP offers that Google doesn’t is a mobile version of your business page, where you can offer your products and services with individual services and ratings. This offering includes a QR code. People take a snapshot of your QR code and have your business information instantly available in their phones.

Yahoo! Local: Yahoo! offers business listings much like Google, with a slightly different layout. With Yahoo!, however, you’ll have to upgrade your listing to “paid” if you want to add images.

With just these three places, you’ve already gone a long way towards building a “website free” online presence.

Unending Online Marketing Opportunities for the Savvy Business Owner

One of the great things about the Internet, in a business sense, is that there’s no end to the number of places you can input your business information and have it posted. Think of these places as “online business cards”. Most of them are easy to set up and get going. Such places might include:

 Internet Yellow Pages (IYP): There are tons of these, so go for the bigger ones. To find out which local engines are best for you, try search for service and/or product terms in your city. For example, kundalini yoga Kansas City brought up Yellow Pages, Citysearch and Yahoo Local. Dentists Kansas city, on the other hand, brought up Super Pages, Yelp and Yellow Pages. It might take you years to hit them all; doing a little bit of research ahead of time can save you lots of work!

Vertical Directories: AKA niche directories, verticals give you ample opportunity to display your business listing without needing a site. Thanks to current technologies and social networks, these directories are reaching out to more individuals in more ways.

The problem with vertical directories is that they’re a dime a dozen. As with IYPs, you could spend a lifetime submitting to all of the directories out there and still have some left. –And, more are coming every day. So, how do you find the right ones for you? A post on SearchEngineLand, How To Find the Right Local and Vertical Sites for Your Small Business, goes a long way toward explaining the process.

Classifieds: This may be an online world, but that doesn’t mean the classifieds are out. Don’t forget that there’s an online version for just about anything in a brick and mortar world.  Examples of online classifieds, just to get an idea, include Craigslist, Oodle, OnlineClassifieds and more. Be careful of the email you use to post your classifieds, however; a lot of places like these are an open invitation to scammers and spammers.

Moving Into Social

Of course, you can’t leave out social networking. We’ve written tons of articles in the past about using social media for your business. The difference is, you’re not pushing traffic to a website; you’re pushing traffic to your business pages and your brick and mortar place. Because of this, you’ll need to look at other sites we don’t always mention.

Moving Into Social

Check-in sites, are an excellent example of mingling business savvy with social media. Places like Foursquare, Bright Kite, Loopt, and Gowalla give you the ability to reach out to consumers. Those consumers can reach out to each other, as well as find, talk about, share and visit your business. These multi-phone platforms also allow you to share coupons and deals – and, you can specifically share them with users on these sites for extra incentive to come to your brick and mortar.

Yes, You CAN!

You CAN have an online presence without a website. You really can. In fact, there are enough business listings out there – legitimate, frequently visited ones – that you can do very well with them. The only problem with a non-website online presence is the lack of control. Unless you’re using paid listings, these places can yank your information at any time.

After thinking outside the box for a while, we’re glad to be back in it. We like our website and all it entails – from the amount of time it takes to keep it maintained to the interaction we’re able to have with our readers. If you own a brick and mortar business and don’t have the time or money to keep a site going, we hope the above helps get you started with online marketing. For us, however, we’ll take keep our website and continue building her into her own, warm, friendly, yet somehow bossy, personality!

While talking to a friend of mine the other day – small business owner trying to grow her business like anyone else -, I had that line going through my head. You know, the one from A Few Good Men – “You want the TRUTH? You can’t HANDLE the TRUTH!” You see, my friend has big dreams; she wants and expects big things from her website…

The TRUTH About Your Small Business, Brand and Marketing Power

Can You Handle The Truth?

There’s a lot to be said for drive and ambition. Drive and ambition can take you a long way towards whatever your idea of success is. BUT, there’s a lot to be said for “keeping it real”, too, and today I’m going to throw some realism your way.

You CAN’T compete with big business.

When you run a brick and mortar company, it’s easy to keep your head out of the clouds and your feet comfortably situated on the ground. However, there’s something about taking your business online that tells you, “I’ve made it! I can conquer the WORLD!” (insert mad laughter here)

You start dreaming about taking business from places like Wal-Mart, Overstock and JCPenny’s. You begin to think you’re bigger than the biggest dog on the block – until reality comes crashing down. Nothing worked the way you thought it would, and you’ve spent more money, time, or both to find this hard truth out.

Marketing Budget

That’s because you think you’re in competition with these mega corporations. You aren’t, because you don’t have:

•  their massive marketing budgets,
•  the millions of satisfied customers,
•  the years of brand name building,
•  their infinite (or close to) resources.

You simply can’t compete on their level! Don’t throw your arms in the air and give up, though, because there is something you can do.

Dream Big, In Small Doses: Branding & Inbound Marketing

You’re small, yes, but you’re not insignificant. You just have to tweak your thought processes a little. You have to learn how to dream big, but in small pieces. No matter how big your dream, remember the following:

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Your brand won’t be either. It takes time to build a brand. It takes customer satisfaction, authority, and the knowledge of who you are. People will have to learn what your business is all about, and you start with things like:

• A strong brand statement
• A plan for managing your reputation
• Content development strategies to increase your authority and brand recognition

You have to start somewhere. Rome started with some dirt…

Your website is just a business card.

If you’re new to the online world and your site barely has the bubble wrap off of it, it’s nothing more than an online business card at the moment. It has a chance to grow, but it takes time. You’re not going to get online and receive tons of traffic the first day – life isn’t that neat, nor is it that convenient. Just as you would with a brick and mortar store, you’re going to have to work to build up visitors.

• Create a blog, and decide how much time you have to put into it. How often will you be posting? Be conservative; once you start a schedule, people will very quickly learn to expect blog posts from you on those days.
• If you don’t have enough time for blogging, pinpoint a few places for posting occasional articles to share your particular expertise with others.
• Showcase your services or products, much like you would in a department store. How visible are they on the site? Did you just throw up a picture (or worse, a one-line description), or did you put thought into how the product looks on the page? The art of proper display is still everything!
• Make sure your site URL and social info is on everything you put out that pertains to your business: business cards, letter heads, emails, and any trade show products, for example. Don’t miss these great opportunities to turn offline meetings into potential customers and relationships.

Your business card needs to be passed to other establishments – online.

What does that mean? It means Google Places; it means Yahoo Local, Yelp and HotFrog. It also means getting to know your neighbors, potential coworkers and competition. Therefore, just as you might introduce yourself to the business owner next door in a physical mall, you’d do the same online:

• Make your social icons and accounts highly visible, giving individuals a chance to reach out and connect more closely with your brand
• Visit blogs in your niche or relative niches
• Introduce yourself and ask about them
• Add your business to local directories
• Treat Google Places, Yahoo Local, Yelp, HotFrog, Bing and other sites as if they were allowing you to put a business booth up – because they are:
• Videos
• Photos
• Maps
• Testimonials
• Phone number
• Address
• List of services

You can learn more about these topics by reading Local SEO: Are You Hitting Your Traffic Corridor and Local SEO Is Like Real Estate: Location, Location, Location.

Growth is Your Main Goal

Sales and growth are your main goals.

When you get online and start reading about all this SEO stuff, it’s easy to get stuck in the idea of traffic. You have to have traffic to your site if you’re going to succeed, right?

The reason why optimization has grown to encompass so many skill sets is because traffic, in and of itself, does you no good. Traffic gets you nowhere if your visitors don’t buy. Otherwise, they’re just putting wear and tear on your merchandise by handling it and putting it back on the shelf.

This is the number one reason why SEO is changing into inbound marketing (a whole other post by itself). Inbound marketing focuses on your main goals: sales and, through sales, growth. Yes, it’s done by traffic, but it’s targeted traffic – and that makes all the difference.

Don’t obsess over whether you get more sales from one of your search place pages than you do from your website. Pay attention, yes, but don’t obsess. If you implement the tips above and your sales are growing, you’re doing well!

Meet the standards of SEO first – then worry about the rest.

In this instance, we mean “standard” practices first, before getting into indepth SEO. What are some of these standard practices? A short list includes:

• Check your URLs. Are you being listed for www and non-www versions of your site? Are your URLs reader friendly or full of dynamic parameters? Are they easy to remember?
• Make sure your meta data is strong – relevant, readable, clickable titles and descriptions.
• Ensure your anchor links aren’t there just for SEO. Don’t add a link to increase optimization; add a link because it helps the user. Where should they best be placed?
• Check your content for proper, semantic, heading usage (h1, h2 tags, for example).

Just making sure these things on your site are correct, relevant and strong can make as much as a 50% difference in your traffic and conversions.

Your Budget Isn't A Suggestion

Your budget isn’t a suggestion.

You have set a budget, right? If not, set an annual, bi-annual and monthly budget. In this budget include your SEO, social and marketing. How much can you afford?

Then, ask yourself, “How can I work within my budget to achieve what I want to achieve?” Can you break your marketing into phases? How? Many inbound marketing companies will work within your bi-annually or yearly budget – IF you let them know you have one.

No matter how much you may want to spend tons of money on this product or that service, you have to face facts. The fact is that your budget is all you have to work with. When it comes to inbound marketing, it’s important to remember that it takes time. The less money you have the more time it takes, but it’s never instantaneous, no matter how much money you throw at it.

Don’t strain your budget on products or services, hoping they’ll skyrocket you to the next level. We get lots of people contacting us that know they don’t have the budget for a full campaign, but aren’t willing to go for anything within their constraints. Be realistic about what you can afford, and work within those confines until you can do more!

The Truth Hurts, But…

You own a small business. You aren’t Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or any other Mart. You’re just you. –And yet, it takes a special kind of person to take the steps needed to become a small business owner. It takes your drive, ambition, courage and dedication to keep it going. That all translates into your business, your marketing and your brand – and that’s a brand I can get behind!

Social media killer

You know that song Video Killed the Radio Star? Someone should have been making sequels. We could have had Facebook Kills the MySpace Star or YouTube Kills the Quicktime Movie Star. Or maybe just the Internet Kills All the Non-Internet Stars.

With Facebook becoming more ubiquitous by the moment and SEO becoming the go-to formula for long-term internet success, will they soon leave behind other forms of marketing and advertising?

What’s to become of print advertising, radio ads, email marketing software, commercials, journalism or even snail mail?

-And, why has the Internet taken over? Simple. Its widespread accessibility, ease, and entertainment factor make it a desirable destination for just about anything.

The Age of Internet Marketing

Just as technology changes, the way we use it changes as well. Websites used to be all businesses needed for recognition on the Internet, but now that’s not enough. The way we once used internet marketing is coming to an end.

Sales and marketing have changed over the years from selling just products to selling the ideas, lifestyles and image that come as a result of using their products. This monumental shift means that advertising on the internet became key for reaching a target audience and for putting forth the cutting edge image that puts customers in a buying mood. What monumental shifts can we expect in the coming years?

SEO versus SM

Though it may have started off slow, Internet Marketing has taken off. Facebook now garners more weekly traffic than Google. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world behind just China and India.

With 800 million users now on Facebook, businesses are using and will continue to use social media to recruit. Eighty-percent of companies are already using social media to recruit new employees and of that percentage, 85% use LinkedIn.

The Rise of Social Media

Ubiquitous social media sites like Facebook or Twitter mean that businesses of all sizes promote themselves online for free and this trend will only continue in the future. Businesses no longer need a domain name, fancy website or full-time graphic designer. They can create a Facebook page or Twitter account and easily be found by anyone looking to engage with their brand.

Social media makes it easy to establish the online presence of your brand. On Facebook or Twitter, giant companies like Coca-Cola or Johnson & Johnson are on the same playing field as Fred’s Froyo Stand or Natalie’s Nail Salon. They have to generate followers, of course, but the basic bones are the same.

In the next 10 years, 40% of our current Fortune 500 companies won’t be around anymore, which is mind-boggling to think about. The future of business is difficult to predict, but as more arise and as it’s easy to get exposure, what’s the best way to stay on top?

With everyone fighting for digital relevance through social media and more archaic forms of Internet marketing, what’s to be done to beat your digital competitors? The answer: SEO.

The Rise of SEO

The Rise of SEO

Many companies like to think they don’t need SEO to be found. But, the history of changing Internet trends suggests otherwise. Businesses have been told over the last 15-20 years that they needed websites, blogs and social media sites. Many didn’t listen at first, but soon realized their blunders. This pattern is now becoming the case with SEO.

With the rate that search engines Google update their algorithms, the only way to stay ahead of the game with a digital presence on Facebook, Twitter, WordPress or anywhere else is through the use of SEO. If people can’t find you online, your business will not flourish.

The Verdict

So, what does all this mean? Will social media and SEO really trump other forms of media advertising? While there is no way to predict the future with absolute certainty, following the cues of history tell us that SEO is going to be the next big thing in Internet marketing. Soon, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and websites won’t be enough to help potential customers find you on the web. Like it or not, the future is now.

Local SEO

Local SEO often brings a big ”X marks the spot” picture to mind. People see that X and say, “Yep, that’s my local area.” After all, your location is where you are, right? If you’re reading and nodding, you aren’t alone. You can bet others are doing the same thing.

-And, if this is true, you have to wonder, “What will local SEO do for me?” Well, to be blunt… it can do a lot.

Local Search, Local Terms

Optimizing for a location (i.e. local SEO) isn’t about where you are physically. It’s about where your ideal audience is. It’s about finding out how they search, what they search for and, ultimately, how to get them to your site.

Before we get too deep into this article, I want to take a brief moment and demonstrate why local SEO is such an important thing for many sites. In preparing for this article, I visited Google Insights and compared two keywords: sofa (in red) and couch (in blue). Notice that the top 10 regions aren’t the same:

One of the keys for local optimization efforts is targeting the phrases used by your market. If you sell furniture to West Virginia (couch country), but live inNew York (sofa country), you just might miss a lot of potential traffic. In fact, you could miss as much as 50% of the traffic.

If that’s not enough incentive to look at local SEO as a viable business focus, consider that 20% of all Google searches are local. Google searches total 14.3 billion, which means that 3 billion people use Google’s local search on average. As well, a 2010 study by BIAKelsey found that 97% of consumers use online media for local shopping.

Location-based SEO can help you gain that traffic. If all of that sounds good to you, read on!

 How Big Is Your Traffic Corridor?

Your Traffic Corridor

A traffic corridor is where you want your site traffic to come from. To answer this question, you have to know how far you can reasonably spread your business at this moment. Don’t get greedy, here. You can always grow, but you can’t take back failed service because of your inability to provide to an area.

For example, if you’re an in-house computer technician, your service area may only be 30 miles or so. Any more than this, and you risk spending more time driving (and more gas) than you would working and making money. On the other hand, if you live in New York, it may be one of the boroughs.

Those who offer products have other options to look at. For example, if you have a physical store and all your visitors can do is order online then go pick their order up, you have a limited area. If you ship products, your area goes only as far as you’re willing to ship. These limitations could be within your city, state, nation or continent (USPS offers a shipping price calculator, as does UPS and FedEx).

If you offer in-home or at-your-business services…

If you don’t know how far you can travel during a day (and still get customers taken care of), Free Map Tools has a few handy mapping tools for that. Gathering this information is the beginning of finding out how well you’re actually targeting your traffic corridor:

How far can I travel? – The online application provides you with a radius, showing you the distance by road and as the crow flies.

What zip codes are in my traffic corridor? – If you have zip code parameters enabled on your website, through a user form or shopping solution, it could be handy to learn about the zip codes in your corridor. The radius search map brings up a list of zip codes available in your travel area.

What cities are in my traffic corridor? – The radius search map highlights the area, overlaying the cities within the area. Like Google Maps, if you think a few cities aren’t listed, you can zoom in to get a closer view.

Optimizing for Your Location

It’s easy to think you’re doing well when your traffic numbers start rising, but traffic doesn’t do any good if it’s:

• Not coming from the right location
• Not using topical key phrases (i.e. when people visit a home repair site for making money)
• Not looking for what you have to offer

The chances of one of these types of visitors converting into customers are slim. If you dig into analytics and the data doesn’t match up with your traffic corridor and/or search terms, your local SEO needs tweaking.

While creating a location-focused campaign, ask yourself:

• Does my website define the targeted areas?
• If you have several locations: have I provided a list of those locations with address and hours information?
• Do I have separate pages for each location, or at least each city?
• If you only have one location: is my physical address listed on the site?
• Have I created Google, Bing and Yahoo accounts for my business profiles?
• Is the address written exactly the same across all three accounts?
• Have I provided as much information as possible on these accounts?
• Are the search phrases different depending on location?
• Have I thoroughly researched location terminology (i.e. couch vs. sofa)?
• Have I capitalized on my local citation resources (i.e. Yelp, BBB, Chamber of Commerce, HotFrog, etc.)?
• Is the address written exactly the same across these accounts?

If you answered “no” to these questions, you need to create a campaign to turn the answers to “yes”!

Read more about local SEO and steps you can take on a recent post, “Local SEO is Like Real Estate: Location, Location, Location”.

Never Enough Time

Rushing around

If you have a lot of pages, products and target areas, you aren’t going to be able to localize the whole site at once. It’s better to focus on a few and take your time making sure everything’s right, than to rush through and risk messing up.

Create a few location-based landing pages and test them. While you’re waiting for results, incorporate tools such as 4Square to add value when people come to your shop. As well, look into QR codes to grow your business. QR codes and mobile use are growing at a fantastic rate; they’re definitely two things to consider for your business.

-And finally, if you’re reading this and thinking, “But I just did such and such for my site… and now I’m supposed to do this, too,” we empathize, sympathize and understand. The day you started your online business presence is the day you stepped into one of the most fast-paced, fastest changing industries ever.

You don’t have to take all the advice given here and on other blogs – in fact, we encourage you to consider what advice actually fits your business. However, with few exceptions, local SEO is one of those things you can’t afford to ignore.

10x10x10 Marketing Rule

By now most online business owners have heard of SEO. In this day and age, hearing about website optimization is like the 80’s Faberge Organics Shampoo commercial: We called it the 10x10x10 rule…you told two friends, and they told two friends and so on, and so on!

It’s seems like every time you think you know something about a subject, though, the Internet Marketing community wants to throw something new at you. Okay, so local SEO isn’t exactly new, but many optimizers have been pushing it lately. This is largely due to the changes in the SERPs – and since local SEO is highly recommended, we’re filling in this particular content gap.

So, what’s this local SEO stuff? Is that anything like putting your zipcode on your website? What good does it really do, and what can you do to capitalize on this?

A whole 10 people for every small business…

Every time there’s a recession, statistics show a jump in small business ownership. According to the Office of Advocacy [PDF], there were 27.3 million small businesses in 2008. It’s probably around 30 million by now. That sounds like a lot of competition, but consider that there are over 300 million people in the U.S. (population density by state [PDF]). That’s an average of 10 people per small business.

Now, consider that not all 30 million small businesses live close to you, and that most can only handle a small area. Suddenly, things start looking a lot easier, don’t they?

Well, they are… and they aren’t; you still have to advertise. You still have to get the word out about your business. Conceivably, you could hand out thousands of business cards, pay a TV station or two, and put out radio ads, but these kinds of traditional advertising generally take more than the small business owner can afford.

A website, on the other hand, gives you a relatively inexpensive way to become known to your target market; namely, those in your area (and, who doesn’t want more than ten customers?). That is, if you practice local SEO.

Why would I need local SEO?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know over 80% of the U.S.is either using Twitter, using Facebook or on their mobile phone somewhere. You should also know that most (somewhere in the 90 percentile) of America is online. If you aren’t searching, it’s because you’re being searched.

Local Bike Shops Results

Local SEO thins the herd of SERP results. Some searches only bring back 20,000 results or so; some bring back even less. However, it’s common to see over 1 million, or as many as 240 million pages for any given search term. This is especially true if the term is about a product or service in high demand, like SEO (service) or statistics software (product).

If you have no location attached to your site – if you could be anywhere in the world -, there’s no way for the search engines to consider your site relevant for a local search (i.e. SEO in Mississippi). This is where local SEO comes in very, very handy.

Local SEO Fun Factors

As much goes in to local SEO as goes into SEO in general. The difference is focus – your focus – and where you put your efforts. If you have a physical store on top of your online presence, you’d better take some time management classes; you’ll need them to get your own local SEO done… like some of the important key factors below:

NAP

No, this doesn’t mean go get some sleep on a regular base. NAP stands for (N)ame, (A)ddress, and (P)hone number. If you’re a local company, your site needs to have all three pieces of information on it, especially on the contact page.

• Provide a local number, even if you have a toll free number, too.
• Don’t use an image for this information. Make sure it’s all searchable text.
• Use full names with no abbreviations (i.e. avenue, instead of ave).
• Include zip code, city and state information.
• Be consistent. Wherever your company and URL are, make sure your NAP is exactly the same.

Location. Location. Location.

Local Profiles

There are many sites out there where you can add your business profile information. All of them require a few top pointers, such as:

• Choose the most relevant categories – Categories shouldn’t be chosen based on keywords. Instead, choose what most closely matches what your business is.
• Use your local number, not 1-800 or tracking number.
• Ensure your website URL is exactly what you want it to be – in other words, if you have a www site, don’t leave off the www (and vice versa).
• Leave no field left unfilled out of laziness – don’t get lazy with your listings. If there is a place for a description, as an example, fill it in!
• Point out that visitors can review your business on these profiles

Search Engine Profiles

Local profiles are a pretty big thing in local SEO, and where better to have one for search engines than on the search engines themselves? Google, Yahoo and Big all have their own versions:

• Google Places (FAQ)
• Yahoo Local Listings (Plan comparisons)
• Bing Business Portal (FAQ)

Good Starting Places

• Guide to Google Places and Local Listings by Anthony Verre @ Milwaukee SEO
• Complete Guide to Bing’s New Local Business Portal by Matt McGee @ Small Business SEM
• How To: The Newbie Guide to Submitting a Business to Yahoo! Local byTracy @ Wisnet

Google Places is even more important now, thanks to the company’s new City Portals. Only a few city pages are up, but why wait until your city is on the map and then scramble madly to get things taken care of? Take a second and look at what a Google Place page can do!

Top Local Directories

Although many people think of directories as nothing but spam, local directories have a lot of major pull. Think about it – how often have you put in a local search only to find directory listings all over your SERPs? Here are a few good, busy places to get you started:

Local Chamber of Commerce

• CitySearch
• Yelp
• Express Update USA
• Insider Pages
• Localeze
• Hot Frog
• Local
• Manta

Before submitting your business, first search and make sure it’s not already listed. If you don’t show up, then list away!

Local Popularity

Are you a part of the Chamber of Commerce? How about a member of the local Business Association? Perhaps you’re a member of the Better Business Bureau. These things may not seem like part of your online presence, but they can be. Think of the memberships you’ve taken part in, and consider which ones you might be able to ask for a link.

Local Blog

Hey, even small business owners can benefit from a blog. Having a blog gives you the opportunity to write posts specifically targeting your neighborhood or city. Do you sell candles? How about an article about the upcoming Halloween festivities, and your favorite, decorated homes?

Not only does this give your visitors something interesting to read, but you can also let the homeowners know you gave them kudos in a blog post. Very few people really have a problem with being made famous.

Local SEO Is All About Location

The above are just a few of the things you can work on to increase your local visibility. We’ve left out tons, such as making sure your website address is on all your physical assets, as well. Remember the key term for “local SEO” is “location”.

Places for further reading:

Smugg & Happy

• Local Search Ranking Factors
• Local SEO Tools
• Definitive List of Local Search Citations

As a small business, we understand there’s going to be competition. We also understand that you don’t have a lot of time. Therefore, you have to be smart about the time you do spend building your online presence. Gather as much information as possible before digging in, and then build your local community. After all, that’s where you’ll see the most ROI!

Our question to you: What tips have helped you the most with your local SEO efforts?

Set your confusion aside

Yes, it’s that time again. No, no… don’t be surprised that we’re back with more acronyms, synonyms, the latest buzz words and all around SEO definitions. It’s called the Wild Wild World of Search, so how could we not?

Have you noticed what’s been going on for the past three months? It seems marketing has finally caught up with SEO… or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, we’re here for the long awaited update on the SEO dictionary. It’s not just about SEO; you know those irritating marketing buzz words that seem to be creeping into our daily language? Yeah, some of those are in here, too.

301 Redirect
Used mostly when old pages are replaced by new ones, the 301 redirect is a “permanent” move. Think of it like the post office. When you move from one address to another, you give them your new address. Why? So they automatically send the mail to your new address.

A 301 works much like the post office, only for traffic. If you delete/move/rename a web page without using a 301, you’ll lose all the links, PageRank, traffic and other good stuff you’ve built for that page. By adding a 301 redirect, all that good stuff is “redirected” to the new page. Only, unlike the post office, the traffic doesn’t get lost in transit.

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404 Error
You’re surfing the web and you come across a page that says, “Oops! The page you’re trying to reach isn’t here” or something like that? This is the irritatingly familiar 404 error page. Ironically, a lot of 404’s happen because people didn’t use a 301 redirect. 404 simply means “page not found”.

Hint: you don’t want a lot of these. You can always find a list in Google Webmaster Tools. You can either create a custom 404 page that helps your visitors find related information or create 301s and send them to the new pages.

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Above the fold
Marketers, copywriters, SEOs, etc, often talk about putting the most important information above the fold. “Above the fold” is the area of your page immediately visible to visitors before they ever start scrolling down a page.

Unfortunately, where the fold is depends on the viewer’s browser size. Therefore, a viewer with a 640 X 480 browser size has a higher “fold” than one with a 1024 x 768. By visiting Google Browser Labs and inputting your URL, you can get a good idea of what’s visible to your viewers.

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Absolute Link
An “absolute link” is a link with a complete URL. Example:
<a href=”http://level343.com/article_archive/”></a>
This link will reach your website from anywhere on the Web, no matter where it’s placed.

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Alt Attribute
The “alt” attribute stands for “alternate”. This alternate text shows in lieu of images, when images aren’t visible to the visitor. It is added in the HTML code:

<img alt=”your alternative text here” src=”yoursourcefile.jpg” />

It’s important, when using the alt attribute, to remember that it is also used by screen readers when a visually impaired visitor is looking at your site. Therefore, it’s not meant to describe the picture itself, “purple flower with green grass and blue sky”, but the image’s purpose for being there: “Flowers brighten the day”. These attributes should never be used as a place for stuffing keywords.

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Anchor Text
Anchor text is, for lack of a better description, the text that “anchors” a link to the page.

Text on the page that is visibly hyperlinked.

Example:
<a href=”example.com”>Click here</a>

The “Click here” in the example is the anchor text. For SEO, usability and general, all around usage, anchor text should describe the page being linked to, not the page the link is on.

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Backlink
A backlink is also called an inbound link or an IBL. In Bound Links are links coming from sites other than your own. For example, when you write a guest blog and your bio links back to your site, this is considered an IBL. Their site page >>> your site page.

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Conversions
If you’ve had any marketing experience, you already know what a conversion is. However, for SEO, it can get a bit tangled. Most people think a conversion means a sale. On the Internet, defining what you would consider a conversion all depends on what you want to get out of a particular page.

For example, if your visitor goes from a product page to checkout and completes the buying process, it’s a conversion. It’s also a conversion if you have an informational page or blog and someone signs up for your blog feed, though. Simply put, if the visitor does what you want them to do, they’ve converted.

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CTA
A CTA is a Call to Action. These buttons or links say “Buy Now”, “Contact us today”, “Have you signed up for our newsletter” and so on. CTAs are essential for the success of a business website. They tell the visitor what you want them to do, and the visitor doesn’t have to guess.

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Dynamic Websites
Dynamic websites usually end with extensions like PHP, ASP and JSP. Dynamic sites allow the content to change as a user refreshes the page. Examples of dynamic websites are those that might show revolving banners, changing testimonials, etc. Other examples include sites built on WordPress, Joomla and Drupal platforms, or many eCommerce sites with rotating products.

Unlike static sites, dynamic sites separate the design from the content. In this way, even individuals with no design experience can change the content without messing up the design. You add a new product, for example, and it simply shows up as a separate page, exactly where it’s supposed to.

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Where are your funnels?

Goal Funnel
Whether you use Google Analytics, SiteCatalyst, ClickTale or no analytics at all, having a visual representation of your goal funnel helps you find places where you lose the sale. Often, it turns out the steps you thought your visitors would take aren’t the ones they actually took (see Real Paths to Conversion Infographic).

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IBL
In Bound Links, or IBLs, are links coming from sites other than your own. See backlinks.

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(Editors Note: Added Jan 2011)
Jaamit Link
This is a new term; we don’t know if it will stick, but we hope it does. We’ve added “jaamit”, created as a memorial to a wonderful person in the industry.  A jaamit is a very strong link, one that even outlasts the link builder. Read the link to the article for more information, a touching story and a hard lesson about link building. RIP Jaamit Durrani

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Keywords
Keywords and key terms are the word(s) you use to search for something on a search engine. For SEO and your business, they’re terms you think your target market will search for. Miami golf shoes, as one of our favorite examples. If you sell them, you might expect people to search for them. Therefore, you want to make sure your site shows up in the top SERPs for this key term.

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Landing Pages
Okay, this here’s a deep subject to get into, because there are two types of landing pages. The first type is more aptly called a sales page. You click on an ad and land on a page completely dedicated to the purpose of the ad. It’s probably four scrolls long and has ample opportunity for you to buy, subscribe or sign up.

The second type is any page on your website. In the purest since of the word, a “landing” page is simply the page of a site you land on after clicking a link. However, when an SEO or copywriter says “landing page”, they generally mean the first type, or sales page.

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Link Bait
Link bait is any article, image, video or other piece of content that attracts attention and links. Examples of link bait include:

• Controversial or ranting posts
• Web and/or mobile apps
• Widgets
• Infographics

Oh, and let’s not leave out high quality articles themselves. A strongly written article can go a long way towards attracting attention, links and authority-building goodies.

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OBL
Out Bound Links, or OBLs, are links on your site pointing to another site. For example, we have several OBLs in our footer under “More Reading”.

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Off Page Optimization
Some SEO techniques include things that don’t directly affect your website. Link building is an excellent example. With link building, the optimizer gets other sites to link to yours. It doesn’t actively change anything about your website except (if done right) the SERP rankings.

Plenty of terms exist in the SEO world, and more are constantly being added. As well, you might have someone using a term you don’t recognize only to find it means something you’re extremely familiar with. When you’re talking with an optimizer or someone in a related industry, don’t be afraid to ask for an explanation of terms you don’t understand. Knowing is half the battle!

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On Page Optimization
SEO is optimizing for the search engines: making sure your site is relevant to your chosen key terms. Several techniques go into this process. The techniques used specifically on the site itself, such as how the content is written, what terms are used, what the code looks like and how images are named are just a few examples of on page optimization.

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Organic Search Results
In the SERPs, you have paid advertisements and organic results. Site optimization targets organic search results, which are shown directly under the paid advertisements. You want to rank high in organic – or natural – search results for your targeted keywords; studies show a much higher percentage of clicks for sites in the #1 placement.

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PageRank
Otherwise known as PR in Googleeze, PageRank is a nifty little algorithm. Learn it, understand it, and then forget about it. Does it matter? Sure – it’s one of the ways Google decides where it will rank your site for key terms. As well, a site with a high PR has more weight to it when it decides to link to yours.

However, few (if any) know exactly what it takes to move up the scale between 0 – 10 of PageRank. People may talk about a high number of links or other factors, but the truth is, they don’t really know. For Google, PR is one of 199 + other factors that determine key term rankings.

If you turn PageRank into something you obsess on, it can become a full time occupation. Since you don’t know what it’ll take to move from 2 to 3, etc, you could be obsessing for a long time. Don’t worry about; if you go up the ranks, simply accept it as a pat on the back and move on.

You can read an excellent in depth article about PageRank @ WebWorkshop: PageRank Explained

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PLP
PLP stands for Preferred Landing Pages. Every page is a landing page, but PLPs are the pages of your site you really want your visitors to see. Read more on this topic at Search Engine Journal: The Art of the Landing Page.

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Relative Links
A relative link can only be reached from within your website. Example:
<a href=”/article_archive/>”></a>
Although WordPress automagically adds the rest of the URL, this doesn’t happen with HTML, ASP and others. On these types of sites, if you copied a URL and pasted it in a browser, the above relative link is all you would see.

Many use relative rather than absolute links. The problems with relative links include:

• If someone copy/pastes a relative link into their own blog while discussing one of your posts, it can cause a 404 error. They’ll end up with a URL that looks like this: theirsite.com/your-relative-url-link/. They get a 404 and you get no traffic.
• Relative links can also create duplicate content issues. If you haven’t properly set up your site to manage the non-www and www versions of your site, you could very well end up with both versions being indexed thanks to those persnickety relative URLS.
• Relative URLS make it easy for website scrapers to… well, scrape. All they have to do is snag your pages – the links remain all nice and pretty for their own servers.

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SERPs
(S)earch (E)ngine (R)esults (P)age(s) – When you open up Google and put in a search term, the resulting pages are the SERPs. When SEO’s talk about raising in the rankings, they’re talking about the SERPs. What do you need to know about this term? That you want to be at the top of them for your chosen key term.

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Spiders
A lot of terms go along with “spiders”. For example, search engine spiders are said to “crawl” the web.  Spiders are also known as “web robots”, “robots”, “web crawlers”, Internet bots” or just “bots”. Spiders are simply programs made to search the web; in the case of search engine spiders, they do so for indexing purposes.

Not all bots are “good”. Some are used for spamming purposes. Called “spambots”, they gather email addresses, hunt through forums for places to submit poor content, etc. Some spambots simply post messages with a lot of links, meant to increase a site’s search engine ranking.

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Static Websites
A “traditional” website is usually a “static” website, and has a URL that ends with HTML. Static websites usually have a set amount of pages with a finite amount of information. Content changes are done by professionals, with the new page uploaded to the server.

Each page of a static site has all the information on it that it needs to be displayed in your browser. What your browser sees in the code on that single page is what you get.

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UGC
User Generated Content, or UGC, is just what it sounds like: content generated by the user. Examples of UGC include Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Threadless is also an excellent example (and darn good business sense, too). Comments on your blog, guest posts and so on… in other words, if your visitors provided them, they’re UGC.

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URL
AKA Uniform Resource Locator, a URL is an Internet address. Examples: http://mycompany.com, http://www.yourcompany.com/blog/blog-title, http://mywebsite.net/introduction.html

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What SEO terms would you add to the list? If you have suggestions, let us know in the comments!

One of many pings...

One of our favorite past clients, and one of our most loyal supporters, recently asked about pinging blogs:

“Do you find it beneficial to ping your blog? I have done it. I usually use pingoat, pingfarm and pingomatic. I didn’t see anything in your blog about it. Any thoughts?”

Thanks for the question, Carla. We do have some thoughts, as a matter of fact – lots!

Ping – The Go To Guy for Website Owners

If you’re used to IT lingo, it’s important to point out that this isn’t the same as pinging an IP address.
We’d like to introduce you to PING, your personal search engine notifier. PING, in this instance, stands for Packet InterNet (or Inter-Network) Groper. This utility is the go-to guy. Have you ever wondered how Feedburner, for instance, knows you have new content on the site to send out? Or how this RSS feed directory or that one knows your site has changed?

You send out a ping, he runs to the search engines or social bookmarking sites, and says, “Psst! There’s content over there!” Maybe he waves his hands in the air, jumping up and down to get their attention, whichever visual you prefer.

In other words, ping notifies the search engines, feed directories, social bookmarking sites, etc. that new content has been published. He invites their crawlers back for a read. Seconds later (a long time in Internet years), a bot from the site or search engine PING notified comes by for a visit to peruse the new content you put up.

New content crawled, newest page (potentially) indexed – et voila!

Why You Might Ping Your Site/Blog…

Google Crawl

Pinging is a way to help the spiders crawl your site faster. Not to say they don’t do their job, but some people, especially those with a short amount of patience, think it can be done better.

We often see Meta tags that try to tell the spiders when to come back to the site – i.e. how often they should visit. However, the “revisit-after” tag isn’t a command; it’s a suggestion. In fact, it’s a: “Hey. If you feel like – you know – maybe, sorta, kinda, paying attention to this sign that says ‘come back tomorrow’, would you maybe, sometime, possibly consider it?” Generally, this tag is just plain ignored.

Crawlers have a “how often”, a “how fast” and a “how deep” set of instructions when they visit your site. You can specify the rate you want the Googlebot to crawl your site (for example), but “how often” and “how deep” are up to the bot. All setting the rate does, is tell the bot how long you want it to wait between each page request. This setting is used to ensure the crawling doesn’t overwhelm your bandwidth.

As well, your site may not be set up in an efficient, “spider-friendly” manner (this is one of the reasons it’s a good idea to have a sitemap). Therefore, you might have some pages crawled and indexed, while others are left hanging out in the non-crawled, non-indexed ethereal NeverWhere.

The “revisit-after” Meta tag doesn’t work. You can’t tell crawlers to come back at a certain time. – And, since your site may or may not be crawler-friendly, you’re left with few options if you want your content crawled quickly and efficiently.

Before you start pinging, don’t forget a sitemap

This is an excellent time to mention sitemaps again. Having a sitemap on your site, as well as added to Google Webmaster Tools, helps in several ways:

• Ensures that pages within the sitemap are indexed
• Helps search engines better understand your site layout
• Allows you to tell the search engines how often you plan to update your content

Most importantly, a sitemap provides a user-friendly experience that can help visitors with little time quickly find what they’re looking for. Of course, you can use an onsite search function, but what if they don’t know exactly what they’re looking for? A successful site owner always has to take these considerations into account.

Offer Help when you can

When to Ping

There’s nothing wrong with pinging search engines, social bookmarks and RSS feeds. However, there’s a caveat to that. You don’t want to ping these places every five minutes; it’s called spam-pinging, and if it has “spam” in the word, you know it’s not a good thing.

So when’s the best time to send a PING? The only time you really have a good reason to ping a site is when you’ve a) put up new content or b) changed content so much it might as well be new.

Pinging in WordPress

WordPress has a built in PING feature, which means you don’t have to worry about manual pinging. However, it’s also an over-eager feature.

WordPress automatically notifies popular Update Services that you’ve updated your blog by sending a XML-RPC ping each time you create or update a post. [our emphasis]

Sounds good, right? Except… the bolded part of the statement above is a problem. This means, every time you update a post – whether it’s a single update (make all changes and save) or several updates (make changes, save, make changes, save) -, each “Save” sends a PING.

Could you be spam-pinging through WordPress without knowing it?

If you publish every day and are someone who makes changes, then saves and makes more changes, the answer is… maybe. Fortunately, some plugins will help you cut down on the amount of times WordPress unnecessarily pings; other plugins can help you keep track of where your site is pinging (list of WordPress PING plugins here).

Crawled Doesn’t Mean Indexed

Before you jump on and start throwing pings around, understand that pinging doesn’t do anything for ranking; it’s not a short cut. It doesn’t guarantee ranking any more than crawling guarantees indexation. It doesn’t even guarantee traffic (unless you count bot traffic).

The only thing PING does is notify, so the crawlers will come. What happens then is up to your content and your site.

Jumping with your eyes closed

Therefore, before worrying about a ping, make sure your site and content is in good order. Make sure your current pages are being indexed; if they aren’t, deal with that issue first. Make sure your headlines are interesting and actionable, because they’ll be seen first – in the SERPs, in the RSS feeds and in the social bookmarks. Once you know everything is good, only then should you consider using PING.

Ready. Set. Jump Into Metrics.

You’ve taken your website through the evaluation process. Maybe you found some things that need to be changed; maybe you were lucky and found that your site was already well prepared. Either way, you’ll eventually have to dig in to the metrics and make sure things are happening like they’re “supposed” to.

Maybe it’s too soon for some of you to roll up your sleeves and jump into metrics. However, monitoring things, at least once a quarter, is always something we recommend with any new business (or any old business, for that matter).

How good are your metrics? How good is your social media and SEO ROI? Do you know?

Tracking Direct Campaign Benefits

One of the biggest reasons to look at your metrics is because your campaigns can go off track without you knowing it. For that matter, if you implement a campaign without watching the results, you wouldn’t know if it ever did what it was supposed to.

With website statistics, you get a chance to find out if your campaigns are giving you direct benefits. For example, how many people came to your site, and where did they come from? Are you getting more visits from Twitter or from your Facebook page? How many referrals are you getting from other sites that are talking about your content?

Not only will you need to know the answers to these questions, but you’ll also need to be able to compare the information.

Why?
Social media and content campaigns are two big parts of many marketing efforts now. With this in mind, consider the number of social networks. As well, consider how many sites you could guest post on. Can you possibly use them all? No. Therefore, we always recommend trying a social network and a few content sites first, then watch the results for at least three months.

Comparing Metrics for Informed Decisions

For social networks, you compare the new one to the results from networks you’re currently using. Based on the information you receive, you can then decide whether it’s worth incorporating that network into your campaign. Metrics you might compare are:

• Traffic from the networks
• Bounce rate per network (make sure you have the 10 second GA rule in place before putting any weight at all on this metric)
• How many mentions, RT’s and conversations you had per network, per post

In this way, you can find out how much exposure you get. You can use products such as TweetReach, HootSuite or Kloutto track your reach and exposure on individual tweets. As well, Facebook Insights can give you metrics on the health of your FB page.

What Are Your Social Metrics?

What about content placement sites?
Well, mainly, you’re looking at the number of referrals. The other metrics you’d track depend on what you’d planned for a particular post. For example, if your article only has a link to your home page, you want to look at whether they went anywhere else on your site. If your article has a deep link, perhaps to an article, you’ll need to look at how much time they spent on the page, whether they went anywhere else and so on.

Points to Ponder
It’d be nice if the above were all you had to keep in mind. Just look at the data and compare numbers, right? Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than that. You also have to look at what the post was about, how it was written, how long it was and so on. You need to be able to keep track of how you send out the posts as well.

For example, are you asking questions before or after the link? “How do you feel about XYZ – weigh in! [link]” In other words, are you giving them a reason to click on Twitter? Do you give them something to respond to on Facebook?

When you guest post, do you push the post as well, or leave that up to the host site? In other words, how involved are you in your content?

The Metric Called “Relationships”

Once you have something to look at – once you have all your data in one spot – you can look at how the metrics relate to each other.

Conversions are a good example. If you have analytics set up correctly, you’ll have a goal funnel in place. With a goal funnel, you can see the whole process – from the time they reach your site to the time they (hopefully) convert and then leave.

In this way, you can see how many from Twitter vs. how many from Facebook (for example), actually went through the entire conversion process and out the other end. -And, this data can help you understand which sites, networks, etc, bring stronger results in terms of meeting your main goal.

Yet, with all this data and all this knowledge, decision making, et all, there are some things about building relationships that you can’t track using analytics metrics. For example, the data doesn’t tell you about Joe, who’s running in the same site circles as you. Joe likes your content; he recognizes your name and company every time he sees an article you posted, no matter where you posted it.

Here’s another good example:

We had a potential client contact us for a big contract – one of our first big contracts, at that. About three months in, during a conversation about social media, the client said, “Well, yeah, that’s where I found you guys.”

As it turns out, they’d been following our Level343 account for several months – just one of the thousands of followers and monthly visitors to our blog. When it came time to optimize their site, they immediately thought of us.

Trust... never break it.

Why?
Because, unbeknownst to us, we’d created a relationship with them. Of course, that was the plan all along, but you don’t know if you’ve succeeded until such a thing happens. For this person, we’d managed to do what everyone aims for with social media and content development: create a sense of trust, a sense of authority, and a feeling that they “know” us.

How Do You Track Social Relationships?

“Social” relationships don’t come just from social media. They don’t even have to be someone you’ve spoken to or interacted with. Social relationships are any relationships you’ve built throughout the business and marketing processes. For example, they can be someone:

• You met at a conference
• Who’s a regular of a site you guest post on (but may never have actually visited your site)
• Following you on a social network
• Who has visited your blog
• Who’s a friend of one of your vendors
• Who’s a friend of a client/former client
• Who was forwarded one of your newsletters

With all these possibilities, how can you possibly figure out where they came from? Simply put, you have to ask:

Trust is more than an emotion

• In your contact form, have a “how did you hear about us” question. Offer 3 – 5 options of places you’re actively marketing, such as a newsletter, on Twitter, on Facebook, through a friend, through a client, etc.
• If you don’t have a contact form, you can provide a brief survey that includes the question.
• If they call you on the phone, ask them.
• If they’re buying products, add the question to the buying form.

For that matter, you can offer them incentive to answer the question and/or continue the conversation on social networks and/or subscribe to your newsletter:

Example:
Are you following us on Twitter? Enter your Twitter ID for a chance to win [product name, discount, etc].

Example:
Subscribe to our newsletter to get exclusive offers and discounts!

Take it from us, tracking your traffic and conversions isn’t hard, but eventually you have to delve into the returned data to be able to do anything with it. Otherwise, you’re just throwing actions and energy into a bunch of “stuff” and hoping something works. This is what we call “counterproductive” campaigns.

Use the data. Use the metrics. Use the relationships and everything that comes along with them. Knowing where your traffic is coming from and what referrals convert the best will greatly enhance the return on your campaigns, as well as the return on your investments! 

This is what happens in College

As more teens graduate high school, and as others – already in the workforce – look for opportunities to make money, SEO has become a profession that draws them. It seems like an easy job, and tons of sites talk about the money you can make as a professional SEO specialist.

With this in mind, it was no surprise to see a visitor hit our site based on the search query, “do you have to go to college to be an SEO”. It is, after all, a legitimate question.

The short answer is, “no”. In fact, there are no search engine optimization courses available from an accredited college, at least to our knowledge. There are many, many offers of SEO certification, however; SEO Certification vs. Certificate of Completion does a good job explaining the pitfalls of this road. The opening of the article summarizes the difficulty of certification:

Are you a Certified SEO Professional? If you answered yes to the above question, it’s time to face reality. There are no official certifying organizations in the search engine marketing industry, yet. What we do have are a few organizations establishing themselves as what appears to be a certifying authority, which may or may not be in the best interests of the SEO industry. And, based on what I see some of those touting these certifications doing, I don’t think those doing the certifying want to take responsibility for these individuals. Or do you?

No college or certification – what does that mean? Does it mean SEO is so easy you don’t have to have any training? Can you just sit down at a computer and “do” SEO?

SEO is Constantly Changing

The reason – or one of them – that you can’t go to college for SEO is because it’s one of the fastest changing industries in the world of business. By the time you got out of college, half of what you learned would no longer be valid.

The problem with certification, as the article referenced above points out, is that there’s no governing body. To this date, SEOs still cannot agree on a set of “best practices”. –And, again, in a year or two those best practices could very well be defunct. In such a fast-paced environment, what sounds like the fast lane to success can become a trudging path fraught with potential failures.

So What Can I Do If I Want to Get Into Optimization?

Learning SEO

Obviously, becoming an optimizer isn’t impossible; otherwise, there wouldn’t be any. So, it’s not hopeless; if you want to become an SEO, there are options. Just be aware that the road to becoming a professional SEO specialist (vs. being an unknown) is neither fast nor easy.

Option 1: Find a mentor.
The first option is on the job training. Do the research necessary to weed out the crap from the gold. Find yourself a respected individual in the SEO community to become your mentor and work with you.

Option 2: Learn on your own.
There are places, such as the SEO Dojo or SEO Moz, that offer training and memberships. The training isn’t formal, however. What you have is a lot of information to read and practice on your own. Member groups help you understand what you’re reading and how to apply it – if you ask questions.

Option 3: Go to college.
Right about now, you’re saying, “Wait… but I thought you said…” Yes, yes, but read on, and all will become clear!

Prepare yourself...

SEO and College

While you can’t go to college and get a degree in SEO, you can take classes that will help you excel at optimization. For instance, two degrees that would serve you well, are:

Bachelor’s Degree in Business (BBA) – Optimizers need to understand the focus of a business before delving into how to help that business. As well, the BBA courses can give you necessary skills such as:

• Planning – An optimizer must be able to create a plan, or strategy, and arrange that strategy in a logical order. You’ll need to be able to build short and long-term goals/strategies.

• Organizing – The more projects an optimizer juggles, the more organized that optimizer needs to be. Depending on what level in the industry you reach (i.e. sole optimizer, optimization manager, agency optimizer in a team), you may be in a position where you have to coordinate between several departments (marketing, sales, web development, etc.). Organizational skills are extremely useful in optimization.

• Staffing – Again, depending on what level you reach, you’ll need to be able to create and fill job positions. For example, if you aren’t a copywriter, there will be times that you need one to complete a campaign; your client may not have one in house. At this time, you’ll need to write up a job description, know how to recruit people, and know how to screen the writers to get the quality you need.

Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology – What you’ll learn in the course of getting an Information Technology degree differs depending on the college you choose. Some of the things that would help you excel at SEO are:

• Web Development – Although the “higher ups” in the SEO community may now frown down at an optimizer lifting their hand to code, having the ability to develop websites is invaluable to a professional SEO specialist. Technical SEO, a subset of the whole SEO “thing”, is important to the success of a campaign; having a strong, foundational website greatly helps the campaign succeed. As well, knowing HTML, xHTML and other coding languages can come in very handy in the course of your work.

• Data mining and data analysis – Even optimizers that don’t offer web analytics as a service will eventually end up opening at least one analytics program in their professional life time, if not 20 or 30. With data mining and analysis courses, you’ll gain useful skills like being able to find relationships between data sets. You’ll learn how to better target marketing prospects based on data feedback. You’ll also learn how to pull all the data together, from several sources, into a comprehensive report for use by your team and/or the client.

• Algorithm design – Where does algorithmic design come in? Part of optimization is being future-focused; in other words, creating future-proof strategies. One of the ways to do this is to keep updated on the patents being placed by the search engines and prepare for the eventualities to the best of your abilities. Many of these patents have to do with algorithmic changes; having a background in algorithm design can greatly help you understand what’s coming down the line, among other things.

Now, although it was said earlier that college isn’t required, there’s a caveat to that. Many internet marketing firms require either a) one of the degrees above or b) 5+ years of proven experience with another SEO agency.

Courses to Prepare You for the SEO Profession

Preparing you for success

If a college degree isn’t in the plans, you can also go another route: take individual courses to teach you what you need to know, and then find training or mentoring (option 1 and 2 above) to fill in the blanks. Three of the most valuable types of courses you might take are:

Website Coding
Basic knowledge of website coding has proven an invaluable skill set for many a professional SEO specialist. There are literally thousands of college accredited, paid and free courses you can take to learn PHP, HTML and CSS (the most common languages).

Copywriting
Whether you do the copywriting yourself or hire someone, you’ll need to be able to recognize good, strong marketing copy when you see it. You’ll need to understand the difference between key word stuffing and natural use, as well as how to define visitor needs based on search terms.

Web Analytics
A course in web analytics is also a valuable skill for optimizers. Once you implement a campaign, you’ll need to know how to track it, and understand the data coming across your screen. As with copywriting and coding, there are many courses available to choose from. One of these courses comes from Google itself, called Conversion University, which teaches you how to use Google Analytics specifically.

Conclusion

As you can see, becoming a real SEO (as opposed to someone just guessing) takes more than just knowing how to use a computer. Whether you go to college and take courses to help you or not is up to you. In general, college degrees and courses help as a supplement to real life experience, but not as a direct method to learn SEO. There really is no experience like real life experience; there’s no training ground as good as the real thing.

Before making a decision, really do your research. Decide how much time you can afford to take learning this industry, and how much work you’re willing to do. Becoming a professional SEO specialist isn’t easy, but – if you like excitement, constant change and challenges – it can be one of the most rewarding jobs you’ll ever take on!

Are you Overwhelmed?

When you first hear about SEO, you hear about a bunch of things, right? It all comes falling down on you at once: on page, content creation, link building, meta data…. No matter who’s writing about what, almost every article gives the impression that this SEO step (whatever that step is) is crucial to a campaign and must be done.

Every optimizer has a favorite area, and that area is the one they tend to evangelize the most. Yet, of all the things that need to be done for a complete campaign, one has to wonder what the most important really is. Is there a part of SEO that can be considered the immediate priority?

Obviously, the answer is “yes”, or this wouldn’t be much of a post. So what is it? What should a company, especially one on a tight budget, focus on most?

On Page Optimization

If your company has never been involved in the optimization process, the very first, immediate priority is on page optimization. Your website is the backbone of any outreach effort and needs to be as tightly focused as possible.

However, you can’t just write a few meta tags, throw in some key terms and call it a day. Under the “on page SEO” section are many subsections, and each deserves focus and attention:

#1: Keywords, Research and Analysis

Just as your website is the backbone of outreach efforts, your chosen keywords are the foundation of your SEO campaign. This is, quite simply, the most fundamental part of optimization. Targeting the wrong key terms might bring you traffic, but it won’t bring you quality traffic – and really, quality traffic (i.e. interested, converting traffic) is what you want, right?

When you bring in a professional SEO specialist or company, you don’t want to assume you know what terms you should be targeting. We’re professionals for a reason; if you don’t let your SEO provider at least look over your key terms and make recommendations, you’re cutting off the campaign before it even starts.

Further reading on this topic:

Finding Keywords for SEO: How Long Does This Take?
Are Keyword Density Percentages Killing Your Content?

#2: Competitive, Research and Analysis

Things you can do

Researching the competition is important, because you may find yourself choosing other key terms based on how much of a heavy weight the competition is. For example, Overstock is a heavy weight (yes, even after being punished by Google) for several generic terms. Therefore, in general, if you plan to sell furniture you might want to be a little more specific than just targeting the term “furniture”.

Competitive research tells you what you’re up against to reach the top 10 results (your real competitors), and how much work will be involved. Work transfers into man-hours, which transfer in to money, so you can get a gist of how expensive a campaign might cost based on competition, as well.

Further reading on this topic:

Who Are Your REAL Competitors?
Competitive Intelligence: Getting the Skinny On Your Competition

#3: On Page Content

Once you know what keywords you’re targeting, and who the competition is, it’s time to put it to work. “On page content” refers to anything on the site, from meta tags to titles, headings and the body of text itself. Knowing how to merge keywords into your content without making them stand out to the reader can be difficult. It takes practice, but it can be done!

Further reading on this topic:

Semantics and Relevance: Even Keywords Need Support Sometimes
Writing Organic SEO Content: How To, Definition and Terms
The #1 Traffic Builder – Hint: It’s Probably Not What You Think

#4: Technical SEO

What does the lifeline of your site look like? How well do the pages work on your server? Do you have 404 (page not found) errors? Are you using too many redirects? Does it take forever to load your site?

Technical SEO covers things that don’t deal with content, such as those listed above. Before you ever go off site for any optimization campaign, you have to make sure it’s ready for visits. Don’t ignore the recommendations your professional SEO provider passes along. Every little bit counts, and this includes the technical bits.

Further reading on this topic:

Technical SEO: Tools and Approach

At the end of these “steps”, you’ll have a tightly focused, optimized, clean, fast site. Then, you can start looking at the actual outreach programs, such as link building, guest blogging and so on.

Read from here:

Building Campaigns Around Key Words and Phrases: SEO, Marketing, Social Media

Conclusion

There is no single part of optimization more important than keyword research and analysis, and there’s no one section of optimization more important than the on page. Not only will on page optimization give you strong relevance but, done right, it will also give you a site that people want to visit.

Sneeky Google Plus

So, Google comes up with this fancy “Plus” thing. Everybody rushed to take a look-see, only to be locked out as the big G slammed the doors on the masses to slow the flood to a trickle.

The first week was like a Black Friday rush on sales. For the first time, iPhone users frowned at their fancy gadgets and longed for an Android just so they could use the brand spankin’ new Google + app (Apple, by the way, allowed the iGoogle app to go through Tuesday). G+ invites were being sold on eBay for a paltry $25 – $100 (depending on the seller), guaranteed immediate delivery*.

*Most sales have dropped to a starting low, low price of $0.99.

In the First 24 Hours, Speculations, Facts and Fallacies Run Amuck

Psst.. Google Plus is a Facebook killer - Pass it on!

Over 18,000 pages showed up on the Internet in the first 24 hours that specifically spoke about Google’s new baby. Topics were varied:

The Wall Street Journal wrote a short piece about Google’s Facebook copycat, saying the company “appears to like crushing the dreams of soon-to-be-public tech companies.”

ReadWriteWeb offered up a piece after scoping out Google’s new social digs, calling Plus “really cool” and a “super ambitious effort”. The well-written initial Google Plus review by Marshall Kirkpatrick is a basic once-over. Interesting to this reader was the fact that he ended it with, “Can you imagine hundreds of millions of people leaving Facebook for this and sticking with it? That’s a very tall order.”

-And who wouldn’t expect Mashable to throw in their two cents? They did, with a piece called, “Google’s Latest Social Network – Google Launches Google + To Battle Facebook”. Again, it’s a great “once over”, with comments interspersed throughout from Vic Gundotra (G’s senior vice pres). Again, the most interesting thing is the mention of G+ as Google’s answer to Facebook.

In the Conclusion, author Ben Parr writes,

“No matter what Google says, Google+ is the company’s response to the rise of Facebook. The two companies are in heated competition for talent, page views and consumers. While Google controls the search market and has a strong presence on mobile with Android, it hasn’t been able to crack the social nut.“ [emphasis ours]

The Washington Post talks about it taking aim at Facebook. Gawker.com says G+ swears it’s more trustworthy (than FB, of course!), while Business Insider says it’s just like everything else and no big deal.

Google Plus Facebook, via Baby Banter

Now That Everyone Has Weighed In…

Everyone seems sure that Facebook’s death is Google’s goal in launching G +… or maybe it’s Twitter… or maybe Skype. It makes sense in a way, right? After all, social seems to be one of the few corporate pies Google consistently missed and had yet to get its proverbial fingers in, doesn’t it?

Well, now that everyone has weighed in with the “Facebook killer” theory, let me ask a question:

If G+ is only to kill Facebook, why make Google employees bonuses dependant on the success of this venture? Is it just about ad revenue percentages? eMarketer.com predicts FB ad revenues to reach 21.6%, while Google’s is expected to be at a paltry 12.6%. – But is this the only reason for Google Plus?

Google Plus One…

Google Plus One button

In an article discussing the ad revenue forecasts as well as the introduction of Google’s +1 button, Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell begins to open up a slightly different point of view. “Google’s +1 may pit the search giant against the social network in four key areas,” she writes. The top key area is “New User Acquisition”. Keep in mind – this is a full three months before Google Plus was announced:

“Making a Google Profile a requirement for those addictive little +1 buttons is a smart move on Google’s part. It may not match Facebook’s 500 million-strong membership when the feature rolls out to all users, but it has a good shot at vastly increasing levels of profile adoption.”

+1 rolls out and people (somewhat) just shrug and go on. Too similar to Facebook’s “Like” button, with nothing really attached to it. Oh – right, except that Google profile you have to have if you want to use the +1 button…

In a one-two punch, Google then lays out G+, which, incidentally, connects +1 buttons and Google profiles. Don’t forget that there are now more Google profiles than there had been, due to the +1 implementation. –And, for those that didn’t care enough about +1 to get a profile, there’s now G+, which also needs a profile to use.

…and a Slightly Different Point of View

At this point, more people have Google profiles, and more people are using their previously dusty profile, in order to participate on G+. Plus gathered 10 million users in 2 weeks, by the way, and is currently serving up more than 1 billion items per day.

Although this is a “never seen before” statistic, it isn’t the true success of Google Plus. So, what is? Feast your eyes on the following three comments plucked from the SERPs (on Google):

+Tom Anderson: “In the past, I’ve used Google Docs mainly because I wanted web access to files. I’ve never collaborated on it, and now I’m hooked on doing that. Google+ is making me use Google products that I formally only had a slight interest in. In the past week, I’ve started to toy with Blogger & Picasa. Why switch to Gmail, I used to think? Yahoo will do just fine. I’ve been using Gmail more and more.”

+Dominique Johnson: “This is pretty cool! I must say I have found myself using Google more & more since I got on my G+ platform.”

@orli : “Also I must say that Google Plus excites me because of the extensive options and its future connection to other Google services (Gmail, Calendar, Places, etc).”

Finally, let’s read a little of AllFacebook.com’s post, “The One Google Plus Feature Facebook Should Fear”. Author Nick O’Neil opens the post with, “I’ve found the one feature that could take away from Facebook where it’s most dominant: Time on the site.”

However, here’s the really important “take away” from Nick’s post:

“To be honest, my gut reaction after using Google Plus was initially, ‘Why on earth would anybody switch to this from Facebook?’

However, when I loaded up Google Finance as I do every morning, I suddenly realized that I was asking the wrong question. The reality is that users won’t have the option of not using Google Plus.

Google already has more users than Facebook, over one billion. They aren’t going to suddenly leave Facebook in droves, they’re just going to spend more time on all the sites in Google’s network. That big notifications box in the top right of all Google sites is the reason why.”

So What Is Google Really Aiming For?

Jus squeeeeze yer eyes

Humans are intrinsically lazy – as in, most of us will willing adapt if that adaptation is easy. With Google + and “ease of use” in mind, please follow this last thought trail:

From within G+ Hangouts, you can:

• have a private “face-to-face” business meeting
• watch videos together on YouTube (Google property)
• give a presentation and discuss
• co-produce a spreadsheet or document live (with Google Docs)

From within G+ Circles you can:

• Share sensitive documents to a private corporate “room”, or circle and lock down resharing (document control)

From within the G+ Mobile App, you can:

• Conduct meetings or continue private sharing (currently still only available on Android, a Google produced phone. It’s earmarked for Apple as well, which means snagging some of Apple’s market for Google’s products).

From within G+ Photos, you can:

• Create and share a presentation (using Picasa, a Google product)

In short, Google is swiftly integrating a large amount of its products into its new social networking productivity platform. It isn’t Facebook that needs to be watching its coat tails. It’s Microsoft. It’s Apple. It’s every productivity suite you’ve ever come across.

For those that need visual convincing (i.e. pictures), we came across this great presentation on, you guessed it, G+. By +Vincent Wong, It’s also a fantastic example of how a presentation can be created and shared.

The little black bar at the top of the screen takes you to your:

• Calendar
• News Reader
• Documents
• Spreadsheets
• Presentations
• PDFs
• Online photo albums
• YouTube
• Search

You can use it for shopping and quick checkout, for finding recipes, for finding sales and researching scholarly write ups. It’s a single click from your Blogger blog, or photo editing on Picnik. With Fusion Tables, you can create data maps and charts. In short, there’s a lot you can do with Google, and it’s all connected to G+.

Conclusion

Google Plus isn’t a Facebook, Twitter or other social network killer. Yes, they want to get into social, but as a means to bigger and better things. Google wants the cloud, and it wants to take you (and your friends, and your friends friends friends) with it.

– And you know what? By the time they’re done tinkering with G+ after all the feedback, you might not find that such a bad offer.

The social world has been on fire since June 28th. Google Plus posts, tweets and chats are pouring steadily into the social sphere at a steady pace, and show no signs of slowing down. You simply can’t keep up with all of them (we’ve tried).

Many of these posts are somewhat regurgitated content. They’re about how the particular author is using G+ (what the cool kids are calling Google Plus), what they’ve found, why they love it (or hate it), and so on. A few, on the other hand, are quite simply works of art.

Google + Review and Privacy Issues

Circle Packing!

AJ Kohn (creator of Blind Five Year Old, SEOmoz Search Ranking Panelist and so on), for example, wrote a lengthy Google+ Review. Rather than expound on how he’s using the world’s newest social platform, he pinpoints a few issues in the seemingly most enjoyed part – Circles. AJ writes:

“I’m not sure Circles works in practice, or at least not the way many though they would. The flexibility of Circles could be its achilles heel. I have watched people create a massive ordered list of Circles for every discrete set of people. Conversely, I’ve seen others just lump everyone into a big Circle. Those in the latter seem unsettled, thinking that they’re doing something wrong by not creating more Circles.”

One thing that really stuck with us at Level343 is his thoughts on Circles privacy. G+ has gone to a great deal of trouble to give you privacy at an insane level of control. Share with a single person or many, a specific circle or entirely public, and so on. Yet, your privacy only goes so far as the person you share with. If they find it humorous, thought provoking and so on, they are quite capable of sharing it with others. Privacy gone.

As well, as AJ shows, the handy dandy sharing model gives away some things about you that you may not have planned. In a test, he manages to hunt down over 1,000 Googlers that may, or may not, have been under the radar as a Google employee. This kind of information is quickly available just by “skimming” the content of others’ circles. Again, the idea of veil of privacy seems a little thinner than first perceived.

What’s Google’s Real Goal with G+?

Then you have the question that’s been pandered about, “Is Google Plus a Facebook killer?” Amongst the yeas and nays being posted, Marshall Kirkpatrick (Technology Journalist and lead writer for ReadWriteWeb), mentions another possibility on his personal blog.Marshall writes:

“Listening tonight to an interview with Plus designer Joseph Smarr on the IEEE Podcast, it became clear to me that for at least some of Plus’s leadership the goal is not to win social networking outright, or to kill any competitors, but to disrupt the social networking economy with a big enough, good enough and popular enough service that the walled gardens (Facebook in particular) are forced to open up interoperability enough that their users can communicate with the significant enough number of people in their lives that use a different social network.”

Not all the commentors agree, of course. Some argue that Google’s goals are based more on improved PageRank and AdWords click-ability. The comments themselves are a good read, along with the post. What’s Google’s real aim? Only Google knows; however, for anyone paying attention, it’s obvious Google isn’t just creating a new social platform.

From Google’s Mouth to Your Ears

Wired.com published “Inside Google + – How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social” less than five hours after the announcement on the Official Google Blog. In this long, in depth article, the corporation’s code name for Google+, or “Emerald Sea”, is released – one of the smallest details in an fantastic piece of written art.

Writer Steven Levey says the search giant higher-ups have put Google + on the permanent map. Even if it fails, it’s not going anywhere but back to the drawing board:

“No one expects an instant success. But even if this week’s launch evokes snark or yawns, Google will keep at it. Google+ is not a product like Buzz or Wave where the company’s leaders can chalk off a failure to laudable ambition and then move on. ‘We’re in this for the long run,’ says Ben-Yair. ‘This isn’t like an experiment. We’re betting on this, so if obstacles arise, we’ll adapt.’”

This was a great article and well worth reading for those interested in the minds behind Google’s latest venture into social. Again, there’s some definite thought-provoking gold in the comments as well as the post.

What Might Have Been Missed

With all the “news that is news” about G+ flooding the Net, however, a few other changes and details seem to have slipped by a large majority. For example:

• Social Search AKA RealTime Search, has gone AWOL from the SERPS
• Sadly, so has the Wonder Wheel
• Things have been added to the search interface as well, such as a filter for “reading level” and “sites with images” (completely different, by the way, than a Google Image search)
• And did anyone notice the little mic up in the search bar that let’s you search by voice?
• Not to mention the several completely updated Android apps, such as the Google Maps 5.7 update (including the Google + app)
• Or the “Recipes” search option

In short, if you want to keep up with Google and you have the head for it, it might be advisable to search through the 40,000 + patents available that relate to search engines. If that’s too much for you, SEO By the Sea breaks some of them down into slightly less technical bits of information.

Are We Jumping the Gun a Little?

Gun Failing

Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, as soon as Google+ came out, people (read SEOs and marketers) started “testing” to see what impact G+ might have on the SERPs. Others immediately began speculating on how G+ could be used for business purposes. Still others wondered how it tied in with +1… and so on.

Okay, so maybe trying to figure out how to apply a new social platform to business is just, well, business. –And yet, does it makes sense when that platform (even if it IS Google’s platform) is still in testing?

Feedback is still pouring in, to the extent that Google posted a “known issues” page. They’re obviously still fine-tuning, especially in areas such asSparks and Gmail/G+ integration. In short, it’s still a work in progress, and any “test” will most likely end up with the conclusion of “we need to do more tests”.

Quite simply, we have no idea what the final pièce de résistance will be. While you’re planning how to use “Hangouts” for business purposes, they could very well be changing it to the point that your plan is useless (just as an example, people). Give it some time – learn how to use it, or how your target market will use it, before spending oodles of time planning!

Conclusion

The times they are a changing. The old Google is, quite simply, gone – for two reasons. One, they seem to have a fresh new perspective on how to finally reach out to their market (everybody). Two, and most importantly, they’ve become active listeners. They ask questions about a specific area of G+ (for example) and then listen to the answers.

Is it a kindler, gentler Google? Naw – it’s still gigantic monolith of a corporation with an eye on the bottom line and a finger in every honey pot. However, it appears that the company is, at the very least, a smarter, wiser Google. Kisses, and hugs from Europe…

The Beauty of Convenience

I’ve heard PDFs might be bad for my site SEO, and I have a lot of them. I’ve considered switching them to pages, but it’s a big endeavor. What should I do?
Pete R., Davenport

That’s a great question, Pete. Thanks for writing in. As a short answer, we don’t recommend spending the man-hours and/or monetary resources turning your PDFs into HTML pages just for SEO. There are better ways to go about it…

Consider the Convenience

No matter what change or addition you’re considering for your site, the very first questions to ask are “Will this help my visitors” and “How will this help my visitors?” Before you do anything, consider why you used PDFs in the first place. Generally, the answer is “convenience”:

Your convenience – Usually, you upload the PDF because it’s good collateral to have. It was originally created as a brochure, PowerPoint, etc, and it would take time you don’t have to convert it to a good looking, onsite page.

The visitor’s convenience – With a click of a button, visitors can:

• Read your whitepaper, report, etc in easily-digestible pages
• Read without distracting site themes, ads, etc.
• Save to their desktop, mobile phone, etc. to read later if they don’t currently have the time
• Print the PDF if they prefer reading hard copies

If you look at PDFs from the viewpoint of convenience, they’re good assets to have – when warranted. For example, a web page with over 4,000 words may not be as well read as a PDF of the same word count. It’s just not as convenient.

- And remember, you should always put your visitor before the search engines. Having said all that, let’s look at the SEO aspect.

PDFs, SEO and DAO

Search engines can, and do, crawl / index / rank, PDFs. Therefore, having them indexed is also not a problem, in general. What is a problem, for both visitors and search engines, is failing to optimize the PDF. Here is where basic knowledge and DAO comes in:

About Digital Asset Optimization

DAO (Digital Asset Optimization) is a specialized subset of SEO. PDFs, videos, Excel sheets – anything that’s able to be uploaded can be considered a digital asset. It utilizes every possible way of tightening the relevance of an asset allowed by the creating program (such as Adobe PDF or MS Excel). For the rest of this article, we’re going to cover a series of points on how to optimize your PDFs (using Adobe Acrobat) – for the visitor’s sake, as well as the search engines.

• Optimizing for size – Many people simply create the PDF and save it. 1, 2, 3 done. However, a large PDF with many images and pages is naturally going to be bulky; bulky files mean slow loading, and slow loading means loss of interest. Compress PDFs before exporting. You can do this by going to Edit > Preferences > Documents > Save As Optimized for Fast Web View. *

*Note: if your PDF is mostly usable forms, Fast Web View is not recommended.

• Limit the extras – Fancy fonts and images are great for your brochure, but aren’t so great for your PDF. Try to limit the amount of “extras” – not so much that your PDF looks like plain text, but enough so it’s not 4MB.

• Optimize for SEO– You can optimize a PDF in the same way you would a regular HTML page:
  • Use Alt tags for images
  • Use key terms in the file name
  • Use links in your document where warranted
  • Add meta data* – this is easy to do, with no coding knowledge necessary. File > Properties > Description. Make sure you fill out the information areas allowed, including:
    • Title
    • Description
    • Author
    • Keywords

*Note: More options are available by choosing Properties > Additional Metadata, including copyright status, notice and URL reference.

• Optimize for Accessibility – Choosing Advanced > Accessibility, provides further options, including adding tags and screen reader functionality. Tags help you ensure strong categorization. Adding reader functionality ensures those who wish to can listen to the text being read aloud, rather than reading (sight-impaired visitors, for example).

• Optimize for Indexing – If you’re planning on your PDFs being indexed and ranked, don’t upload to some obscure folder 15 links deep on your site. Keep it close to the root directory (example: http://mysite.com/pdfs/filename.pdf), and link to it with pages close to the root.

• Don’t forget to write protect – You don’t want people taking your hard work and claiming it as their own, right? Properties > Security and Advanced choices allow you to set your particular level of copyright protection.

PDF or HTML? Which Is Best?

PDF or HTML

Even though PDFs are extremely popular, HTML is still more preferred in most instances. Consider, again, why you choose PDF over HTML for each instance and decide which is more viable. As you can see from the above, if you already have a lot of PDFs, a better use of your time may be to ensure your documents are optimized rather than switching them to HTML.

As you create more PDFs, you might consider creating an HTML version. Oh, not a copy and paste, but a short intro with a link to the full PDF. Give them enough so they can make an informed decision about whether going to the full PDF will be fruitful for them. In this way, you can increase the relevance of the PDF, as well as “pre-qualify” the reader somewhat. This also ensures they aren’t going to be surprised when their computer takes over and loads a PDF.

Additional Reading

Optimizing PDFs for Search has an excellent outline on how to optimize PDFs for the viewer
Creating Accessible Acrobat Documents is an internal outline, developed by Minnesota Management & Budget, for creating accessible PDFs. It’s an excellent checklist for most PDFs (other than the option for Fast Web Viewing, which we discussed above).

Conclusion

PDFs have their place on the Web and are convenient. However, there is still no file more visitor and search-engine friendly than an HTML file. Before deciding on a PDF, make sure that it’s really going to be convenient for your visitors, and not just a case of “lazy webmaster”.

Don’t forget: if you have a question of your own that you’d like to see answered in a blog, you can drop it in the comments. You can also send us a question on Twitter using hashtag #343SEO, or send it in an email. Until next time, may you always have success.

Numero Uno

A while back, we came across an article on Search News Central (SNC) by search geek David Harry, entitled Google Social Search; seriously, WTF people? In this article, Harry asks why social search seems to have been ignored by the SEO industry as a whole. Another article on SEOMoz, by Rand Fish, also discusses these changes. Both articles are worth reading – for the content AND the pretty pictures.

However, in the meantime, let’s talk a little bit about Google Social, in terms of optimization and search. In case you haven’t heard the news, there’s a lot going on…

Google’s Realtime Search

We’ve know about it, we’ve talked about it, and it’s been around for a while now. You can use Realtime search just as you would with Universal search. The big deal with Realtime is that you can weed out all the pages. In other words, it’s pure conversation; it has ultimate lurking potential for conversational topics. You can see:

• Who’s talking
• What they’re talking about
• Whom they’re talking to
• What they say about a brand or product
• Read their recommendations/complaints

In essence, search for a brand gives you real time, social voting results.

For SEOs, it sucks. You can’t tweak it much. Oh, sure, you can optimize the crap out of the titles and URLs being posted. You can carefully add in targeted hashtags for terms you want to show up for, but that’s all you can do – show up. You can’t stay ranked at the top (unless you want to look like a bot, maybe), because the results are ranked by when they happened.

Social Search

How many of you sign in to Google? How many of you pay attention to whether you’re signed in? For the majority of people NOT worrying about rankings, it’s just one of those things. If you don’t sign out or clear your cookies, you’re constantly signed into Google.

Your search results may not be the same when you’re signed in as when you’re logged out. Why? Because of social search.

See, all the positive ranking factors SEOs target are, by and large, considered votes for a site. Whether those votes are for relevance, quality or just plain link-worthy content, it’s all voting. As with any election, the one with the most votes wins.

However, some votes count more than others. In link building, for example, a link is considered a vote. Site A has 100 “votes” and 10 are from authoritative (.gov, .edu, .org, etc.) sites. Site B, on the other hand, has twice as many “votes”, but none from authoritative sites. In this case, Site A is more likely to rank above B, based on the additional authority.

Enter social search, then, where the vote that counts the most is a retweet by someone you know. This can, an often does, throw a normally invisible result onto the front page. Here, social search offers SEO two big, whopping problems:

Are you listening?

Problem #1

If you’re signed in and have a social circle, a lot of our hard work has the potential of being wasted on you. This is especially true if you follow thousands of people across several platforms. Social mentions can end up pushing down the top results for a search.

As well, Social search puts an image and information next to that image. Our eyes will e drawn, therefore, to that mentioned link first and the “real” top position second.

Problem #2

How do you measure this? We can’t see that “Joe came from personalized search based on Bob’s recommendation.” What we have is a visit from Google based on a keyword. Now, maybe we can get an idea using # of search impressions, but there are no guarantees. SEOs don’t like that. We like stuff we can track.

Take Away Points

What can you take away from this? What does this mean? What can you do?

• ALWAYS put the visitor first
• Make sure your site is properly optimized
• Aim for higher ranking (yes, it’s still worth while – at least 70% of people still run searches without being logged in to Google)
• Create quality, linkable content (you want to get people talking about it)
• Understand that social has gone full circle and you need to be involved
• Use relevant hashtags
• Be social

Since “social media” became a marketing method, we’ve strongly urged our readers to embrace it. We’ve talked several times about incorporating social media and SEO into a single, seamless campaign. We’ve also talked about choosing the right platforms for your audience.

Having said that, it’s important to note that your link can be shared by people on Quora, who may have gotten it from you on Twitter. This means you really can focus your SMM efforts on two or three platforms and “socialize the heck out of them”. If you do it right, and carefully build your network, it can become a true community.

Conclusion

Now, don’t read all this and get the idea that SEO is dead. Let’s not kick that dog again, m’kay? What you can see is that SEO and Social Media need to be united. That way, social entices logged in Google searchers, while SEO entices logged out searchers. It’s a win-win. Don’t ignore one for the other, and don’t play favorites.

It’s not Google’s game; it’s your business.

Forget about the obvious?

Is your website doing what it’s supposed to be doing? Is it bringing in visitors that stick around, read and convert? If it isn’t, we ask you to consider the points in this article. They’re big points, even though they may seem like little, nit-picky, OCD things. They matter.

Oh, wait… before you continue reading, you have to pretend you’re dumb – because, guaranteed, you’ll one day get a comment about your site (if you’re providing surveys, or otherwise testing, that is) and think, “Well, that’s dumb. It’s obvious that XYZ means…”

So – pretend you’re dumb. Forget about the obvious. Stop believing that everyone thinks the same way you do, because they don’t. When you get to this point, look at your site with your new, fresh eyes.

Does your home page – through text, video, links, or other content – clearly define what it is you offer?

? – If you use images, do they clearly support the text, or are they just pretty pictures?  Example: That picture you have of the man sitting in an office, in front of a computer, staring at a cell phone, may not mean “mobility” to your visitors. To them, it could mean, “lazy employee always dinking around with his cell phone when he should be working.”

? – Do your navigational links clearly define where a click will take your visitors?  Example: Does the link “Clients” mean –

• Click here if you want to become a client
• Sign in here if you are a client
• Click here for a list of our clients

? – Do you have a clear call to action? Examples:

Clear call to action

• View our products
• Call today
• Act now
• Sign up for more information
• Contact us today to…

*Hint – having “Contact Us” in the navigation doesn’t count.

Would your interior pages work as one-page websites?

Many people simply assume that everyone enters a site from the home page. They imagine a clear-cut path of to conversion: Home, Services, Service One, Contact Us, and then Thank You. This is, after all, the most logical, “obvious” path to a completed sale. Because the path is seen as being so cut and dry, many make the mistake of starting the “conversation” on the home page. They simply treat the other pages as a continuation of that conversation.

Reality doesn’t work like that, however. It’s not nearly so clean; it’s somewhat messy, in fact. A site set up in the way just described ends up providing a disjointed conversation. The real path, or paths, to conversion are quite different (please see: The Real Path(s) of Conversion (INFOGRAPHIC)).

While the home page for most sites is the most common landing page, it isn’t the only point of entry. Therefore, each page has to have:

• Its own call to action
• Its own, clearly defined points
• Its own conversation

If your interior pages would not stand on their own as individual websites, you need to do some reorganizing.

Do your 404 pages end the conversation?

Ah, the 404 page; that frustrating page that says, “You know that thing you were looking for? Yeah – it’s not here.” Many visitors won’t take the time or don’t have the time to go digging in your site to find what they were looking for. Most of the time, they’ll just return back to whatever search brought them there.

By creating a custom 404 page, you lessen the visitor’s frustration. Custom 404’s can start a conversation, or continue one. For example, “We’re sorry – the page you’re looking for isn’t available. However, our top pages are listed below, or you can use the handy search feature.”

Check what your 404 page says. Just type in your URL, add a forward slash and a couple of characters ( http://mycompany.com/xya ). This will take you to your 404. Look it over with the ideas of convenience, consideration and keeping visitors there.

Conclusion

Many things can go wrong with a site. Some of the most insignificant changes – changing the link colors, for example – can raise your conversion percentages. If you stop focusing on what you think is obvious, focusing instead on the not-so-obvious, it can help you prepare for your visitors.

Have you thought something was obvious, only to be told that it didn’t make sense? What other tips might you have to help our readers strengthen their sites?

Fast Food SEO

Sometimes it seems like people think SEO is the fast food of online marketing…
Potential client pulls up to the order window. “Yeah, um, I’ll take first place ranking for that extremely competitive key term? But, uh, hold the long tail.”
The optimizer on the other end of the speaker starts calculating costs, time and manpower. “Of course – and you want that when?”
“Now, please.”
…….
Um.

SEO – Fast Food Style

Think about fast food for a moment. For many people, fast food smells good, looks good, tastes good, and it’s cheap. – But it’s not really good for you, is it? Tons of calories, lots of fat and not much nourishment. Well, fast food SEO is much the same, and it comes with a lot of fine print. So much for holding the fries…

• We’ll submit your site to thousands of search engines ¹
• We’ll get you on the front page of Google ²
• We’ll build you a sitemap so the search engines can see it ³
• We’ll do all this for $49.99 a month ⁴

Fine print:
If you don’t get results, it’s not our fault and you can’t blame us.

1. Yes, we know this is useless, but you don’t
2. For noncompetitive, we-get-to-choose terms
3. Of course, you don’t need a sitemap if your site layout is clean, but we’re not going to tell you that
4. Anything extra will cost you an arm and a leg – and maybe your first born, but we’ll discuss that later

Can't Get A Star SEO

Can’t Get A Star SEO
Cost: Cheap

All right! We’ve moved up a notch in the SEO restaurants to serving a side salad with the specialty house dressing of unknown links. You get your search engine submissions, your sitemap, and your front-page ranking for ain’t-crap terms, but that’s not all! We’ll throw in a boatload of links just for you. This delightful package is yours for just $59.99 a month!

Looks good, smells good, tastes good, it’s cheap… and it has that magic word in it: links. Do you know where those links are coming from, though? Often, promises of thousands of links mean just that – thousands of links. In other words, you get quantity, not quality:

• Automated submissions
• Crappy directories
• Links buried so deep you wouldn’t find them in a million years

… but lots of them, so… bonus (notice the sarcasm).

★ One Star SEO
MICHELIN Guide meaning – Very good in its category
Average Cost: Fairly inexpensive

Now, the meaning of stars for restaurant ratings all depends on the place doing the rating. For instance, the Dallas Morning News says a single star is “fair”, but “the experience is generally disappointing”. The MICHELIN Guide, however, says a single star is “very good in its category”. Yeah… we’re going with that one.

One star SEO isn’t so craptastic as the above examples and it’s still cheap. These purveyors of optimizational (new word!) delights generally lay them out like a cost buffet. Each step of SEO has a price; you can choose what type of optimization you want done.

It might bring you traffic. It might even bring you a little bit of targeted traffic. Chances are, however, that the traffic won’t continue to build and your site will be hungry again. This isn’t a statement against the one star SEO firms; they do what they can, but you can only do so much with a little here and a little there.

Choosing a one star SEO firm isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s like eating at a family restaurant – it depends on what you’re looking for. One star firms are for those who a) have a tight budget or b) aren’t serious about optimization.

★★ Two Star SEO
MICHELIN Guide meaning – Excellent and worth a detour
Average Cost: Expensive

If you’re looking at two star SEO companies, you’ve become serious about feeding your website good traffic. You also have to have a strong marketing budget; it doesn’t come cheap.

Your two star SEO company will start asking intrusive questions like, “What goals do you want to reach with this campaign,” and “what kind of SEO have you done in the past”. These questions are equivalent to “Would you like a glass of wine with your meal?”

They lay out three course meals, each necessary for a great dining experience. SEO becomes a set of “phases”, starting with the first course, or the SEO audit. They hand over an in depth benchmark metrics report with all the flair of an experienced maître d’, along with recommendations of what wine would go well with your main course (the campaign).

Specialists in their field – professional, technological maître d’s – two star SEO companies provide a long lasting meal of nutritious traffic for your website. Hormone-free, non-genetically modified, organic SEO.

★★★Three Star SEO
MICHELIN Guide meaning – Exceptional and worth the journey
Cost: If you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it

There aren’t many restaurants that warrant the MICHELIN three star rating; there aren’t many SEO companies, either. Vibrant ambiance, gracious service, delectable menu and an award-winning chef are all part and partial for this type of company.

The guiding rule for those wondering if they should hire a three star SEO company is, “If you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.” Gone are the monthly or quarterly reports; the chef is doing his job, it’s reflected in your company bank account, and if you want to know whether your traffic is up, you know how to get into your analytics.

If you’ve signed up with a three star SEO company, you get the full treatment – the tasting menu and a matching glass of wine with each small, savory course. Here, you don’t tell the chef, “Wait a minute, I don’t need all this. I need…” It is assumed that, since you came to them, you obviously don’t know what you need – that is, after all, why you came to the professionals. You have a job to do, and that job is to enjoy the meal, as it’s served. Including the petit four between meals & a sommelier for your 1998 Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Now, this description may sound forceful and a little rude. However, by the end of the meal, your site is full of traffic – good, quality, tasty traffic. It smells good, it looks good, it tastes good… and it’s wonderfully nutritious.

Conclusion

Why the analogy of the restaurants? Your website is a traffic-guzzling machine with a bottomless pit for a stomach. It’s always going to be hungry for more visitors; to be more succinct, you’re always going to be hungry for more visitors.

You may be looking at how many unique visitors you’re getting and think, “Gee, it’d be nice to get up to 1,000 per month.” However, once you get there, you won’t celebrate for long. In a couple of days, you’ll be looking longingly at that 2,000 a month mark, or 4,000 and so on.

The thing to remember is, you won’t get there with fast food SEO or can’t-get-a-star SEO. Look at what you need to accomplish, how much you’re willing to spend, and how important increased traffic is to you… before you ever go shopping for an optimization company.

What Kind of SEO Are You?

If you’ve been in the SEO industry for more than a year and had the chance to talk to a few of your optimizing associates, you’ve probably begun to realize that you may not optimize the way another SEO does. At Level343 we are firmly convinced that there is more than one kind of optimizer.

Never mind philosophical questions like, “If an SEO optimizes a site and nobody pays him, is he still on SEO?” – And we’re not talking about the age-old argument about reading vs. doing. We’re talking about personality traits… some might call them personality issues, disorders, etc – that can be categorized into several sections.

Follow us, if you will, into the minds of our fellow optimizers, and learn about…

SEO Jumpers

SEO Jumpers

Also known as “fly by the seat of our pants” optimizers, these SEOs prefer to skip the testing and put things into action. They generally begin a sentence with, “I wonder what would happen if I…”

They’d rather leap at an idea or perceived opportunity and try it rather than talk about it. The Jumper philosophy is, “By the time I’m done testing, the algos will already have changed and I’ll lose the potential juice.” When something comes to mind, they simply say, “Let’s do it,” and jump in with both feet.

To other optimizers, these SEOs may seem half-hazard and a bit crazy. However, most Jumpers have a sound foundational knowledge of SE ranking tactics and base their actions on that prior knowledge. Amazingly, their feet-first leaps work more often than not.

SEO Geeks

SEO Geeks

Another name for “Geeks” would be “Generals”. At the forefront of SE change, these SEOs pass on gleaned information to those working in the trenches. Optimizers in the trenches are then expected to change their tactics to meet the upcoming SE changes.

Geeks are immediately recognizable by their reaction to the question, “So what do you think about XYZ tactic?” Another optimizer might start a conversation, exchange ideas and stories, or scoff and point out why the tactic they use is better.

A Geek, on the other hand, will gently smile and shake their head at the poor little dumb bunny. They are then likely to start a long-winded discourse about how XYZ tactic is past its prime because of SE patent #1023894, submitted by SE experts X and Y, which, when combined with SE patent #3569238, undeniably says the SEs are aiming toward algo changes that will, not only make XYZ tactic useless, but will also turn SEO on its head and make it beg for mercy (pheww).

Geeks may be long-winded and type in extremely long sentences, but other optimizers love them. They may occasionally deign to step away from patents long enough to do a little optimizing here and there, but, on the whole, would rather consult than do the actual optimization. Often, these SEOs will kindly write up condensed versions of the patents for reading by the masses, while passing any work they don’t want to do on to others.

Cautious SEOs 

Cautious Geek

Cautious optimizers will always test first. They’d rather know a tactic works before implementing it, and may miss potential opportunities because of this. Like the Jumper, they also start sentences with, “I wonder what would happen if I…” However, the Cautious SEO will look at the idea six ways to Sunday, check the data, test and track before implementing on a client site.

Now, some optimizers not in this category may laugh at their Cautious industry contacts, but others know better. These careful SEOs know the tactics they use backwards and forwards. If they say, “this tactic works,” or “this program is a good one to use,” you can be assured that it’s true. Every method, every tool and every SEO site in their inventory, whether “old school” or new, is capable of producing positive results out in the wild.

If you know a Cautious SEO, don’t let them out of your site. These optimizers are the ones to ask for product, method and site recommendations. When you ask, “What do you think about ABC tool,” they’ll tell you and, most likely, have a better one to pass your way.

SEO Data Dogs

SEO Data Dogs

Data Dogs, as the name implies, are constantly sniffing after the hard data. “What does the data say,” they might ask. You’ll often find Data Dogs pouring over analytic files, server logs, and measurement tools. Thriving on baseline metrics, numbers, charts and graphs, these optimizers are constantly looking for viable information sources.

Data Dogs are often OCD, and are therefore invaluable for implementing and tracking a campaign. Disgusted by the lack of micromanagement, these SEOs are more likely to put the campaign in motion themselves. After all, if nothing is set up right, the data coming back won’t be reliable.

From key terms to URLs, social bookmarks, titles, tags, anchor links and the sites they go on, Data Dogs will make sure each step is flawlessly implemented to report correct data. For those looking for a good measurement program, whether it’s for site analytics or social media measuring, these are the people to ask.

The Alcoholic SEO

(Added – Thanks to Justin Parks for the idea)
The Alcoholic SEO treats optimization like a binge drinker treats booze. Quick to complain about how SEO has ruined their life, they’re drawn back to their addiction, nevertheless. These optimizers often talk about packing their bags and moving to a new career, while feverishly typing notes in their high-tech notebook at the SMX conference.

The Alcoholic SEO wavers between being Cautionary and being a Jumper; they have a love-hate relationship with search. During the Cautionary, or sober, phase, they test everything and check to see if old tactics are still working. During the Jumper, or binge phase, their favorite saying is, “Hey ya’ll, *hiccup* watch this!” Depending on the phase, these optimizers can be found sighing over the good ole’ days of uncomplicated SERPs or gleefully stumbling after the next great idea.

Wildly unpredictable, they have an unusual knack for digging in gutters and coming out with gold. While others are trying to figure out how to use their newfound knowledge, the Alcoholic SEO is implementing with drunken giggles. As of this date, other optimizers are still struggling to create an SEO Anonymous group. Unfortunately, the Alcoholic SEO is too busy staring at data with morning-after eyes to join.

Conclusion

The above are just a few; of course, out of the many SEOs in the industry, we’re sure there are more categories.

Would you agree with these categorizations? Do you have any to add? Most importantly, what kind of SEO are YOU? Let’s make this fun, people – drop your ideas in the comments and see how many we can come up with!

Evaluating SEO and Marketing Software

Anyone who’s heard about the miraculous, site saving service known as SEO has eventually researched it online. Anyone who’s researched it and has had problems with their site has probably looked at SEO providers at least once. Anyone who’s had problems with their site, researched SEO providers and decided optimization didn’t fit into their budget has probably looked – at least once – at potential SEO and/or marketing software.

If this is you, did you look past the first results in the search engines?

You know, even most professional SEO specialists have some form of marketing or SEO software. – And, sometimes, we end up testing software that flops or doesn’t perform like we think it should (or as it’s marketed to perform). Overall, however, most of us do a good job of finding software that does what we need it to. Usually, we don’t find it in the #1 place for an “SEO software” query.

First-page ranking doesn’t always mean the best

This is true whether you’re looking for software, hardware, vacuum cleaners or laundromats. In fact, if a site shows up in the #1 spot for a high competition search result, this is more likely to be due to an excellent SEO instead of an excellent product. As you research for SEO and/or marketing software, keep this important point in mind.

Finding and Evaluating Marketing or SEO Software

Yes, look at the top results. However, before signing on the dotted line, you always want to look further than the SERPs. Here are a few tips to help you find the best software for your project.

Define what you need your software to do

As of yet, there isn’t a single piece of software that will perform all the tasks you’ll need for an SEO project, although some come close. Most SEOs have four or more tools in their toolbox. Before you actually start researching, you’ll need to lay out some basic guidelines. For example, “I need this piece of software to help me…”

• Track my key term rankings
• Research my competition
• Research key terms for competition and search volume
• Perform a site audit for errors
• Perform a page speed check
• Find other, related key terms

Now, you may end up with a long list. If so, pare it back to those you absolutely have to have a piece of software do. Remember, there is no complete SEO tool out there… yet (although many SEOs are working feverously to create one).

Let's Go Fishing

Go fishing

SEO software, or marketing software, doesn’t always go by these two terms. To get a complete picture of what’s available, you have to use other search terms as well, such as:

• SEO tools
• Marketing tools
• SEO platform
• SEO management tools (or software)
• market research tools

Use any search term you can come up with to find what you’re looking for. For search ideas, you can also look on the left side of your search engine. For Bing, “Related Searches” are shown right at the top. For Google, click “Related searches” under “All results”. Bookmark software offerings that look promising.

Research your potential SEO or marketing software

Once you have a list of potential software options, start clicking through them. Do searches on each product name. Read reviews and testimonials. You can also gain great information on these products by searching under the “Blog” or “Discussion” tabs available in Google.

Most software review sites are, unfortunately,<ahem> useless. If you use a software review site to gain information, read their review process and, always – always – look for backup reviews, no matter the review site.

Choosing between paid and free versions

Just as a #1 placement doesn’t mean it’s a good product, a price doesn’t mean it’s worth it. If you’re looking at a paid version and it offers a free trial, take it. You may end up trying several products before you find one that fits the bill, but the time will be worth it. For example, Raven Tools and SEOMoz (either of these tools is a great addition to your toolbox) both have free trials of their pro version. You’ll get full access to the tools available before you pay a dime.

Now, not all the good tools are paid. Some really good tools are free, just limited in what they can do. Professional SEOs often look for a tool that does as much as possible, and then use other tools to supplement where the big one is lacking. Conceivably, you can choose several free tools to take the place of one large one. Therefore, don’t choose based on price unless you have no budget. Choose based on what the software can do, versus what you need it to do.

SEO and Marketing Software – A Short List

Below are listed a few of the products (free, paid and trials) we’ve either used or heard great things about through the SEO grapevine. Listed in no particular order, with a variety of functions, the list includes:

• Raven Tools
• SEO Moz
• Web CEO
• Traffic Travis
• SEOBook Toolbar
• SEM Rush
• SpyFu
• Page Speed
• SEO Power Suite
• Authority Labs
• Index Checker
• Majestic SEO

Conclusion

Amazing amounts of people pay for products, services and software simply because they rank on the front page of the search results. – And sometimes, it works out okay. However, when you’re talking about SEO and marketing tools, you’re basically talking about the backbone of your site.

Don’t buy marketing and SEO software just because it ranks well. Do the research; take the time and test those product offerings with free trials. Find out what product will do the most for you!

Okay, it’s your turn. Do you have a favorite piece of software in your SEO or marketing toolbox? Give us the product, and don’t forget to include the link so we can check it out!

Traffic Boost

It was down to the wire. We needed a big boost in traffic and we needed it yesterday. Everyone waited impatiently as the boss read over the copy; the copywriter rubbed her raw fingers, staring down at the still smoking keyboard she had ruthlessly pounded in a race against the clock. The optimizer, bouncing on her toes, stared at the boss and chewed a fingernail down to the nub. The boss gave a quick nod. “Send it to the client.”

With a sigh of relief and the first line of approval passed, the copywriter jabbed out a quick email, attached the copy and sent it flying through the lines. Leaning back, she gave a half-hearted grin to the optimizer, who switched to destroying another nail.

Five sweaty, painful minutes later, a reply came back.

I like the tone and the information. It’ll spread like wild fire – but what about the keyword density? I think you could fit “Kansas city real estate law firm” in there at least 10 more times. And don’t split it up. I want at least 10% density for the whole term. Nobody will notice.

Keyword density…

…the bane of existence for many an optimizer and copywriter. Somewhere, somehow, people got the idea that there is some magic number for the times a keyword should be used in a piece of copy. The idea has stuck. Oddly enough, they apparently haven’t found out what the actually number is, however, because everybody seems to have a different percentage.

What is keyword density

Rushing around

For those that don’t know, keyword density is a percentage value, based on the number of times a key term is used vs. the number of other words in a piece of copy. The “talked about” density ranges from 2% to 9%, depending on who’s doing the talking. To give you an idea of what that looks like, consider this:

At an 8% density, a single keyword would have to show up eight times in a piece of content approximately the length of the first two paragraphs of this article. Eight. Times. Now, you might think, “well, a single word… that’s not so bad”, but what if it’s actually a key term?

When the idea of keyword density became big for a while, we had clients who wanted a high keyword density percentage for terms like real estate law firm and used car deals. Trust us when we say, no matter how good the copywriter is these words will not look natural used several times in a single piece of content.

Sacrificing SEO

A while back, we wrote a post about organic content. In the comments, a reader said, “I don’t quite understand the phrase ‘Sacrifice SEO before you sacrifice the content quality’, could you elaborate?” This question ties in perfectly with this article.

We don’t, and never have, advocated any type of crappy content. This includes keyword stuffed articles. High quality articles retain more traffic, every time, than a bunch of overly SEO’d content.

By “sacrificing SEO”, we mean don’t choose SEO over user experience. In this case, it means don’t be so worried about keyword density that you forget someone is going to read your article. Don’t use a keyterm again just because there’s room for it. Your readers will notice, will consider the copy as content spam and will not stick around for more.

Never force the usage of a term. Let the words flow like music, baby, and let your readers dance to the tune. One commenter summed it up this way, “…if you’re in a situation where you could put out lower-quality content that would rank better, or have a better quality article that might not “rank” as well (due to lack of spammy keywords, etc.), you should put out the better quality article. Your audience and the Internet will thank you.”

Ranking isn't everything

Ranking isn’t everything.

Don’t scoff, it’s really not. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you get, none of it counts unless you retain at least a portion of your visitors. That’s the idea behind organic SEO – to bring in, and retain, visitors. Because:

• People who come back are more likely to associate your business with a product or service
• People who read your blog on a regular basis are more likely to think of you when they need a product or service
• People who read your blog on a regular basis are more likely to trust your opinion
• People who come back are more likely to bring others to your site

Guaranteed, these same people who could become word-of-mouth cheerleaders, will ignore you if you spin out spammy content. Even those that don’t recognize keyword stuffing and don’t know anything about SEO… they may not know what it is, but they know bad content when they see it.

Conclusion

If you’re writing articles and blogs about your topic, key terms will naturally show up in the copy. It just happens that way. If you can’t figure out how to “fit them in”, you need to change the focus of your article. Because, yes, Virginia, people will notice when you force keywords to fit. Keyword density is just another number. If you worry about it too much, you could end up killing your content and, ultimately, your traffic.

Google coming through

“It’s Google’s game; we’re just playing it.”

~ Igor Tossell, The Globe and Mail

There’s been a lot about SEO in the mainstream news lately, from the Wall Street Journal to The Globe and Mail, and even the New York Times. Last week, we posted a rant, (If You’re Going to Write About SEO, Get It Right) showing off a little bit of spirited irritation for the inaccurate and often sensational portrayal of an industry we love.

It’s no wonder some of these places might not be completely accurate about SEO, especially if you count the Huffington Post as “properly SEO’d”. For the longest time, almost every article started out with something similar to, “If you searched for [key term], you’d find [large number] of searches. What does that say? That a lot of people want to know about [key term].” You’d also find a long list of key words “artfully” disguised as tags.

These methods worked, getting the Huffington Post ranked for a many an unusual term. Therefore, people interested in SEO (but not having much knowledge) nodded and said, “Yup, that must be SEO.” In fact, a similar method was made in a NYTimes article about websites not fighting fair for the term “Mother’s Day flowers”.

Which just happens to be the very first three words on the page.

Standing all alone by themselves.

In a single sentence.

Hmmm… Was the NY Times trying to take over the SERPs for a highly targeted phrase around the same time as Mother’s Day? Just a thought; not, of course, an accusation.

Pardon the digression. The point of this article is to shine a little light on some misconceptions.

SEO and Google Gaming

Many online places have written about SEO from the view of someone who doesn’t actually practice it. You can tell, because very seldom will an actual optimizer use the term “gaming the system” or “gaming Google” to describe optimization (although the number is rising as the term becomes just “part of the lingo”).

The more Google changes the SERPs, the harder it becomes to rank for terms without at least nudging the guidelines a little. However, that doesn’t mean the basics they outline have changed. In fact, when you’re looking at the Google SEO starter guide, what you actually find is some good, common sense information.

Now, keep in mind that Google doesn’t care about your business. Google cares about Google’s business, and Google’s business is relevant results.

Visitors, Google’s users, want relevant results. They’re on a hunt for information; they don’t want round about titles and descriptions where they have to guess what’s on a page. They don’t want to come to a page and find out the information on it has nothing to do with what the search snippet promised.

Tips from Google’s SEO starter guide include things like:

What do you think?

• Choose a title that effectively communicates the page’s topic
• Write a meta description that informs and interests users
• Use simple-to-understand URLs with relevant words in them
• Use mostly text for navigation
• Keep your on page content organized around the topic
• Create anchor texts that makes it easy to tell what content is being linked to

This is a short list of steps that fall under search engine optimization – and it’s followed by SEOs everywhere. It’s the closest thing you’ll probably find to an “optimization template” in fact.

This isn’t “gaming the system”, people. This is focused marketing.

SEO – Laser-focused Marketing

Search engine optimization is all about relevance. You have a site that covers everything about home improvement. You want to rank for home improvement, and hire ABC Professional SEO Specialist to take care of that for you. The first thing they’re going to do is find out what your business is about and what you hope to accomplish for your site.

Somewhere along the line between the first step and the campaign creation, they’re going to check the pages of your site for topical relevance. Almost every optimizer will have a story about the client that “over optimized”, and put every descriptive tag they could think of on a page. Our job, as the professional SEO, is to clean it up and categorize into as few, tightly focused categories as possible.

Further reading on this topic: Building Campaigns Around Key Words and Phrases: SEO, Marketing, Social Media Information Architecture – Content Layout is Everything

In fact, our job – the real job of optimization – is to make sure everything is relevant to the search, that each page and everything surrounding that page is tightly focused around a single topic (aka key term). As a visitor, who isn’t thinking about SEO, it can be helpful to see things like informative page titles, a beginning paragraph that summarizes the article, or concise wording in links.

Why Oo Why ?

So why do people call it “Google gaming”?

Well, for the most part, people in the industry don’t use this terminology to describe SEO. Why? Because it takes hard work, constantly staying updated in an ever changing industry and applying it all. When “gaming Google” is used, it’s generally used to describe blackhat SEO (SEO that doesn’t follow Google guidelines).

Everyone who steps into SEO as a business eventually has to decide how far they’re willing to go – what they’re willing to do outside of Google’s guidelines – to achieve rankings. They have to decide if they’re going to “game Google” and risk their client’s online businesses, or do the hard work of the whitehatter. To be honest, most choose “grayhat”- a fine line between black and white.

As a side note, it’s important to understand that black hat SEO isn’t illegal; it’s just against the guidelines Google sets up. –And, as the search engine continues to ignore legitimate sites in favor of content farms, content scrapers and the like, more white hat SEOs threaten to change sides, or at least push the line a little. Plain and simple, keeping to Google guidelines and providing client results is increasingly getting harder; for many, “gaming the system” is beginning to look pretty good.

Further Reading

If your website isn’t doing well in the SERPs and you can’t figure out why, Google released a list of 23 questions to ask yourself when looking at your site. It’s post-Panda, so this should give you a good idea of what the search engine is looking for now.

SEO Isn’t Google Gaming

If you want to think of SEO as gaming the system, that’s fine. If you prefer to say SEO is a bag of tricks, that’s fine, too. However, if you don’t actually get the truth about SEO and what it does, you’re going to lose this “game”. It’s focused marketing, often on a microscopic level. It’s micromarketing; it’s targeted marketing. Through SEO’s various subsets (SEO copywriting, link building, coding, etc) your site becomes more visible – to the search engines and, most importantly, to your prospective buyers.

Hillbillyhood

That’s IT. I’ve had enough of online newspapers writing things about SEO. I really have. I happened to come across this article by The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail, ya’ll.

I don’t have anything against The Globe and Mail, anymore than I have something against the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (who’ve written about SEO lately). There’s nothing wrong with them, IF I want to read the news.

However, when I read an article written by someone who isn’t in the SEO world – isn’t even on the outskirts of the SEO industry – well, it’s brings out the hillbilly hood in me. I have this insane urge to grab their faces, look deep in their eyes and say kindly, “shut the hell up”.

So this Globe and Mail article: the writer, Ivor Tossel, has some good information. As a former programmer, he probably knows a thing or two. Hell, he could probably teach me a thing or two. He even says some of the right stuff, like, “And SEO really is a whole industry – entirely devoted to making websites more prominent on Google and its competitors.”

Then he has to ruin it. “It isn’t a terribly technical practice,” he says. “Anyone can do it. There doesn’t need to be much, if any, programming involved.” Then, he adds the big whopper:

“Instead, it’s achieved by manipulating the content of pages – their titles, the links they contain, and their words and pictures. The basics of SEO are accessible to anyone.”

To top it all off, the single comment says,

“A lot of SEO amounts to trying to gain a search ranking unwarranted by the site’s content. A good search engine should sort the wheat from the chaff. Much of SEO tries to game the system… Dollars ploughed into content will do more for you than the same amount blown on SEO. If you focus on content you have nothing to fear from the latest Google dance.”

Mhmm. Right. Okay.

Now, I don’t know who Steve St-Laurent (the comment writer) is. Nor do I particularly care. He could be the top SEO honcho of the Internet and I’d still be irritated. Between the New York Times articles and this one (Handle SEO With Care), the SEO industry sounds like a cesspool of suspicious looking, sneaky characters from spy novels.

Why does all this piss me off? It’s not that I feel SEO is being attacked. On the contrary. I think Ivor is genuinely interested in walking people down the SEO lane. The inaccuracy gets my goat. Inaccuracy, when newspapers supposedly pride themselves in accurate reporting. Yeah, right.

And Mr. Tossel is planning on writing a 4 part series about SEO… For the record, I hope it’s not too full of inaccuracies.

SEO isn’t technical.

You know, I was just saying that same thing to Gabriella, while reading through lines of code to find all the places that might need tweaking. Okay, so there’s a little sarcasm here.

Maybe coding isn’t the same as writing in C++, etc. Maybe optimization isn’t technical when compared to programming. I don’t know. I’m not a programmer. What I do know is that I spend a lot of time cleaning up code on clients’ websites. I know we spend hours pouring over sites and analytic data – before we ever start the campaign.

What I also know is that “technical” is subjective. If we tell a client they need to optimize their alt image attributes and they say, “What,” this is technical to them. If they ask, “Where do I put this meta data stuff,” it’s technical. When we’re troubleshooting why a client’s site isn’t being properly indexed… drum roll please… it’s technical.

Let’s also consider the creation of optimized, yet marketable page titles and descriptions.

We demand a lot out of these little search snippets. They have to be optimized; they have to be relevant. They have to appeal to the target market so the target market will be interested enough to click through. They have to carry the brand’s message.

We have a total of 226 characters, with spaces, to achieve all this. If you don’t know how to do it, it’s technical. Because all technical really means, you see, is that an action belongs or pertains to a specific art, science or industry. So, while the art of SEO may not be technical in the terms of, “Hey, Joe – what do I have to do to get this lamp socket to work,” it does take a certain amount of skill to perform.

Follow Google’s best practices. 

Google's Best Practices

Ivor correctly points out that Google has a comprehensive SEO starter guide. It’s a list of “what to do if you want to be ranked by Google”. Great; but let’s revisit it in light of recent updates, shall we?

Google best practices say…

• Create unique title tags for each page
• Accurately describe the page’s content
• Use brief, but descriptive titles

Awesome. Sweet. Totally cool n stuff. So you do all that, right? Then your unique, accurate, descriptive titles appear in the SERPs just the way they should, right? Maybe… if the search engine doesn’t just rewrite them. Yes, ladies and gents – Google (search engine, not company) can “decide” to rewrite your carefully crafted titles.

Google best practices say…

• Offer quality content
• Create fresh, unique content
• Write easy-to-read text

Hey, sounds good to me. This kind of advice brings search engines and visitors, so it’s a win-win. Yet, the Panda update, which targeted content farms, made a big hole for content scrappers to take over. What does this mean? It means someone can come along and decide they like your content. They can copy your fresh, quality, unique, easy-to-read text, paste it on their own site and rank above you for the terms.

Google best practices say…

• Promote your site in the right ways
  • Telling other site owners
  • Telling your blog visitors you’ve made changes
  • Offline promotion
  • Google Places

That’s right. Use Google Places. Period. Oh, and – you can buy links, but you need to make sure you purchase them with the aim of getting traffic instead of PageRank, and somehow the search engine can tell the difference. Well, you can buy links if the New York Times doesn’t decide to go sniffing into your backlink profile that is – but I won’t even get into that.

Okay, so it’s a little about being attacked.

SEO is my job. It’s my passion. I’m a search nerd and coding geek. So, pardon me for a tad bit of irritation when people write about it, and it’s obvious they don’t actually practice it. When the information is wrong, I get pissy. Especially when we’re compared to drug dealers, like we are at the bottom of an NYT article.

“This is a group of people who will analyze this change, come back with a new strategy on Tuesday and be ranking by Thursday,” he said. “It’s kind of like what happens when drug dealers get busted. They don’t find new jobs. They switch corners.”

I beg your pardon? You wanna say that again?

-But whatever. I could go on – I probably did go on too long –, but the way optimization is perceived as an industry is something I feel strongly about. Rest assured, I’ll be keeping an eye on what else The Globe and Mail has to say about handling SEO with care.

My question to you is how do you feel about SEO being in the mainstream news and what these national newspapers are saying about it? Am I being too sensitive, or do you share the irritation/frustration? Share your thoughts and comments!

Top SEO Women 2012

Level 343 is not only excited, but proud to present the final list of 2012 Top SEO Women. We had such a fantastic response for the nominees; thank you all for helping us create this wonderful list!

We have a whopping list of 30 SEO women to vote on. Polls close the last day of November 2011 (Wednesday November 30, 2011) to give us enough time to create an excellent write up. Each person only gets one vote, so make that vote count!

Sponsorship:
We’ve had a few people ask if we were accepting sponsors. If you would like to support the 2012 Top SEO Women Awards in terms of prizes, please contact seocopy@level343.com.

Competitive Intelligence

Competitive Intelligence, or CI, is something you can’t do without if you’re going to have an online business. As well, it’s something you or your SEO specialist had better be doing; you have to know your competition before you ever have a chance of beating them. (Recommended reading: Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World)

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a spy like James Bond, Jack Ryan or Tom Bishop, the intriguing world of competitive intelligence is your chance. Okay, so it doesn’t include cool cars and you don’t get to use lines like “shaken, not stirred”, but you do get to be a spy-ish.

Step 1: Who’s My Online Competition?

The first thing competitive intelligence does is define who your actual competition is. Against whom are you competing? Good question. As we’ve said before, your online competition may not be who you think they are. Your online competitors are those showing in the SERPs for your key terms. Plain and simple.

The frustrating part is that your competition can include places you wouldn’t even think of:

• Government websites
• Wikipedia
• Informational websites

These are the three most common competitors for a given search term. Most of the time, they aren’t even selling a product or service; they’ve simply been chosen by us informavores as the best places for information about XYZ. Bummer. Your biggest competition may be the online equivalent of a teacher or library.

Finding Your Competition

We’re assuming you have a key term you want to rank for (if not, you need to find your key terms and then come back). So, use your chosen search engine and put in your key term. The top 10 – 20 results are your competition for that key term.

Drop those sites into a spreadsheet.

Step 2: Measuring the Threat Level

Threat level – How strong is the competition? What kind of work are you looking at to beat them out of the SERPs? Well, to find out, we measure the competing sites.

Measuring Threat Level

Competitive Analysis

You can use Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, Yahoo Site Explorer or any number of other tools. Run them on the competition. Export the information to an Excel file for easy categorizing, sorting and comparisons:

• How many links (who has the most?)
• Quality of pages with the link
• PageRank of pages with the link
• PageRank of ranking competitor page
• Anchor text
• Type of links (widgets, badges, mentions, press releases, guest blogs, etc)
• Social reach (SEO Site Tools (Google Chrome extension) can give you good feedback on a page’s social reach)
• Page speed tests (nice list of page speed tools)

Competitive Monitoring

Once you gain some insight into your competition, you don’t want to lose it, right? Monitoring your competition is part of gathering competitive intelligence. Plenty of page monitoring tools are available (short but nice list of page monitoring tools).

Page monitoring tools can help you stay updated on any changes your competitor may make to their site. For example: does your competitor have a particularly heavy duty landing page that’s kicking yours out of the water? Set your chosen tool to monitor changes and send you an alert.

What you get is immediate notification when your competitor changes something, giving you a chance to respond quickly with your own changes (if necessary). Think legal insider trading.

Social Monitoring

Turn on your high-tech cloaking device (browser) and visit their social accounts:

• What are they talking about?
• What hashtags (#key term) are they using?
• What pages on Facebook have they fanned?
• What types of links are they sharing, and from what sites?
• Do they seem to be actively engaging their community?
• Have they posted a new sale?

Step 3: Finding Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Find Your Strengths & Minimize Your Weakness

Yes, it’s not all about the competition. If you don’t know already, you need to find out how your site stacks up to the competition. Essentially, you’re running a competitive analysis on your own site:

• Check number of incoming links
• Check PageRank
• Check incoming anchor text
• Check your social reach
• Your site’s speed

Step 4: Putting the Information to Work

All of this information gathering will help you strengthen your SEO campaign. For example, if your competitor has 1 Million + links and you only have 19, you know link building needs to be part of your campaign.

You now have information about your competitors’ high quality links and anchor text. Instead of going for low quality links (such as most directory submission), you can target the high quality first. Here’s a hint: you’ll have to have tons more low level links to make up for a few high quality ones.

If your competitor is heavy into social and a lot of their pages have been dugg, tweeted and bookmarked, you’ll need to look at how your social campaigns compare. Check with places like Klout to gather information like this. Klout isn’t perfect, but it’ll give you a good overview.

If you’re way behind on page speed, well, it’s time to have a serious talk with your webmaster about how page speed matters in ranking.

Don’t automatically copy your competitors’ strategies. Take a good long look at each one and decide what would be best for your company; not every strategy will work for you.

Conclusion

Competitive Intelligence isn’t anything as glamorous as real spy work. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. We don’t recommend ignoring this step in creating an online marketing campaign; this isn’t one of those “optional” things. Without knowing who your competition is, what they’re doing and how they’re doing it (all things a good SEO specialist should be able to tell you), every campaign is just going to be guesswork.

It’s your turn. Have you done any competitive intelligence for your key terms? If so, were you surprised by who turned out to be your competition? If not, please tell us why you chose to bypass this step. Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!

It’s easy to get stuck in the mental mud hole of names. For example, we market ourselves as Organic SEO copywriting and SEO specialists. With that in mind, you might look at our blog categories and think, “Well, it makes sense that SEOs would share information about optimization. – But, what would they know about branding?”

We get stuck on names, don’t we? I’ve never been a fan of titles since they really mean zero when you run your own company. We could have called ourselves the Branding, Content Development, Online Marketing, SEO, Social Media and Reputation Management Company, but it just doesn’t roll off the tongue. It has no flow. It’s hell to type… and can you image the business cards? Moving right along.

Well, today, we’re going to talk about how all this stuff ties together. After studying 4 years of communications and marketing I’m sure I can show what all these things have in common, and hopefully pass on some useful tips while we’re at it. Are you ready?

It’s All Marketing

Everything we talk about, including things like information architecture and site speed, has a part to play in marketing. Not only that, but your brand is the foundation – the starting point of it all.

The Base of the Marketing Pyramid – Your Brand

Think of it as a pyramid. Your brand is the base. It’s the base because, while all these things are what you do, your brand is what you are, in the business sense. It’s how your customers perceive your business. You can’t hire SEOs, copywriters, reputation managers, etc. and let them roam free without at least a little bit of guidance, because all these things affect your brand.

So the first layer of the marketing pyramid is your brand.

Second Layer of the Marketing Pyramid – Your Website

Your website is the second layer; a lot of things are involved in this:

• Design
• Structure
• Content
• SEO

All four can directly affect how your brand is perceived. They can directly influence the message your brand is sending out.

Alright, hold up. I was with you until the SEO. What does SEO have to do with branding?

Let’s look at all the places on page SEO touches your brand:

The Alt Attribute – To you, this may just be an SEO “trick” – a minor piece of code. For visitors with images turned off, however, this is an extra bit of information. How that information is shown -misspelled, repetitive, uninformative (for example) – can have a negative or positive impact on how people see your site, and thus, how they see your brand.

Page Titles and Descriptions – A real SEO, a hard core SEO, would know that page titles and descriptions have to be crafted. They aren’t written; they’re built. These two pieces have to:

• Carry enough relevance and key term weight to rank well
• Be written well enough to attract potential visitors’ eyes
• Entice the visitor to click through
• Carry through with the brand’s message

In short, you can’t have Key Term | Key Term | Key Term – Company Name. No matter how you write this formula, it all looks spammy. You need to incorporate other words, such as learn, read, find out – action words that cause them to act.

Anchor Text – When you have several links on a page and they all say the same thing, this can have a negative impact on how your brand is perceived. Like titles and descriptions, anchor text has to be chosen for both optimization and visitor usefulness.

These are just a few of the places on page SEO touches your brand; an in depth SEO campaign has to be carefully configured to compliment the message your brand is trying to convey.

Third Layer of the Marketing Pyramid – Content Development and Off Page SEO

The third layer isn’t so much about your site as it is about your marketing, and it includes content development and off page SEO.

Now, off page SEO has a lot to do with link building – although LB isn’t the end-all-be-all of it. With link building and content development, you still have to take in brand consideration. It’s not how many places link to you, or how many sites accept your guest posts; it’s who.

As an extreme example, don’t you think you’d gain more authority and link juice from an article on Oprah Winfrey’s site. Compare that to the questionable returns from an article marketing directory like eHow or Associated Content. In other words, whether it’s building back links or creating content, it’s not so much quantity as it is quality.

A good SEO – a true optimization specialist – may use low quality links for a massive push, but the goal are the high-quality authoritative links. They’ll work with a strong content developer to create quality articles for a hand-picked set of guest posting sites, as well.

Ummm… How does this work with branding?

The more authority these articles and links give you, the more authoritative your brand is perceived – by visitors and search engines. A bunch of crap articles on crap sites with crap links… well, crap rubs off on brands just as it does on people.

Top Layer of the Marketing Pyramid – Social and Reputation Management 

Reputation matters

If you aren’t involved in your social and reputation campaigns, shame on you. These two processes are almost synonymous, and can make or break a brand. This layer of the marketing pyramid is the absolutely public layer, where it all hangs out for the world to see.

Your social and reputation have to be managed with kid gloves. Your brand (not the SM firm or RM firm) will be interacting with the public.

Conclusion

At each point of the marketing pyramid, you should be there. This doesn’t mean watching every move; you have to trust your SEO providers, content developers, etc. to have your best interests in mind. However, you do need to check in.

It means asking, “Do you understand my brand’s message?” It means looking at the first few optimized pages and sending feedback, “Hey, I’d rather have that little arrow thing in the page title than the bar.” It means reading the articles provided by your content developer, because those articles will represent your brand. In short, it means being involved in your brand’s efforts – at least on the ground floor of each level.

If you have a small company, you’re probably doing most of this on your own. You can’t get more involved than that. So what it means for you is that, at each level, you have to check your campaigns and efforts to make sure you haven’t lost site of your brand’s message.

A company’s brand is one of the most important – if not the most – considerations, no matter what the campaign is. Once it’s tarnished, it’s really hard to get it to shine as brightly as it once did, with few exceptions. Treat yours with respect.

I’m sure some of you have ideas to share… is there something else you’d add to the marketing pyramid?

How many times must we say it?

As SEO professionals, copywriters and all around mad-crazy marketing gals, we get to think about fancy things like, “How are we going to use this keyword without totally bollixing the whole marketing aspect?” That’s always a fun consideration.

Others might be, “How many times can we use this keyword without it looking spammy in that social media campaign?” and “Should we make this one word or two? Which gets better clicks?”

It’s great when the work you do can be turned into helpful articles for readers… :D

Any time a single word can be broken into two (i.e. keyword vs. key word), you have an opportunity for ranking. Any time you pay attention to the terms your clients/customers use to describe your product, there is an opportunity for ranking. In fact, there are a lot more ranking opportunities than you might think, rolling around in your site’s content.

Unfortunately, those ranking opportunities aren’t always good, grand and wonderful. Sometimes, they can be ranking pitfalls. If you need clarity, think of all the times you or someone else might have searched “company, scam”. Do you think those companies are happy they can be found under that search? Yeah – probably not.

While reading this article, keep the above in mind. You can accidentally rank for terms you don’t want associated with your company or product by introducing a few stray words into your content.

Bonus Tip: Quickly check the terms found in your content with Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools – Verify your site and become a Google Webmaster. Why? Because it gives you a quick overview of important data you can use for your SEO campaign. For the purposes of this article, it shows you the words Google thinks your site is about.

As you move forward with your campaigns – whether marketing, SEO, social media, or a mix -, make sure to check the results every once in awhile. This is especially important if you have a blog attached to your site, as we do.

Every once in awhile depends on what type of campaign you’re running. For example, if you only put out two or three new pieces of content a month, every once in a while is approximately 6 months. On the other hand, if you put out eight new pieces of content or more, you want to check monthly.

Whether monthly or semi-annually, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll find some words that’ll make you do a “how’d that get in there” double take. Like it’s, which is 9^th in our top 10. Go figure.

Now, let’s get to the main part of the article.

Did You Know: Traditional marketing uses key terms and phrases

Yes, yes it does. Think about the latest commercials you’ve watched on television. How many times does a specific phrase get used? A commercial about making your own baby food, for instance, might use “fresh, organic, baby food” four or five times before the 3-minute commercial is over.

How many times must we say it?

Raid is another example. In every commercial, their main term is repeated at least twice, verbally, and more in the images themselves.

Another example could be the HeadOn commercials.

In television commercials, radio ads, direct marketing flyers, guerilla marketing and more, you’ll find instances of key words and phrases. Some are in bold, some are in italics, some are just repeated, but they’re all key to the campaign.

Translating Traditional Marketing Methods to Modern, Online Methods

What’s that saying… twice is a mention, three times is a keyword, more is branding? Taking a lesson from traditional marketing, key words and phrases are simply the words you want your market to use in identifying your product or service.

For example, let’s say you sell all things red. In fact, red has become your identifying phrase. You sell red widgets and red shoes, red shirts, socks and gadgets. Because this is a business and your business website, red would become one of your key terms (due to brand). Widgets would also become one of your key terms, and red widgets, your key phrase.

With this in mind, you might:

1. Create a site page about red widgets.
2. Twitter a helpful tip about how red is a great color to get people excited about something. Use the hashtags #red #widgets.
3. Write a blog about how recent studies have proven that a spot of red on a website can up conversions by 3%, and offer your red widgets. Link this blog to the site page.
4. Send a tweet out about your new blog using hashtags #red #widgets. Include a short, to-the-point line about the study.
5. Share your blog on Facebook, with a 10% off red widget sale from your company.
6. Tweet about your 10% off red widget sale for those using hashtags #red #widgets.
7. Post a video on YouTube about the psychological affects of red and the recent studies. Use a keyword /marketing rich title and description:
   • Title – Red Widgets Increase Site Conversions by 3%, Study Shows
   • Description – New psychology study shows a red widget added to a site can draw attention and increase site conversions by 3%. Using eye-tracking studies on high-conversion pages…
8. Add this video to Facebook.
9. Post this video on your blog.
10. Send a tweet out about the video using hashtags #red #widgets #video.

You Might Be Thinking…

You might be thinking, “How can I possibly do all that and run my business?” Well, in reality, the steps are a little more condensed:

1. Create site pages about your products
2. Decide how many blogs you’re going to put out each month, write and schedule them.
3. Decide how may videos you need and create them to compliment your blog. Either a) upload them all at once or b) upload them according to a schedule.
4. Using HootSuite, TweetDeck or other program, schedule your tweets each morning (check in once in a while to see if someone is talking to you and respond back).
5. Set your social media accounts to draw from your blog feed

You might also be thinking, “But I don’t sell widgets and red isn’t my color.” That’s fine, that’s fine. This strategy has two things going for it. One, it’s merely an example – a beginning outline of how one might go about using key terms in a marketing, SEO and social media campaign.

The second thing is that this strategy can be used for pretty much any key term or phrase. For example, if you sell real estate in Seattle, Seattle would replace red, and real estate would replace widgets.

Finally, you might be thinking, “How do I know if all of this effort is paying off?” Smart question, and it’s answered by monitoring. You have to monitor your important metrics – like, how many people have liked your posts on Facebook, shared them from your site, sent them on Twitter, watched your video, etc.

For each line of marketing you use, make a notation about where you were before the campaign started. “In April, I had 15 followers in Twitter. I have not bought followers or any such thing and I now have 125 in May.” Whatever metrics you’re looking at, you’re looking for growth. The biggest metric to remember is your bottom line. Is it paying off?

Conclusion

Other things are involved in creating and implementing campaigns based on key terms, but the main thing is to stay on course while being flexible at the same time.

Successful SEO professionals, copywriters, business owners, marketers and webmasters are the ones who remember the goal, but are willing to change tactics to reach the goal. The above is just an outline, to show you what’s possible. Take it and run with it!

Is there any particular step you’ve found to be useful in your campaigns? Share it with our readers!

Spam vs Comments

Most SEO professionals have very definite ideas about the Internet. For example, many believe SEO is essential for any website to succeed – whether the business is limited to delivering three blocks or thirty makes no difference.

Some say the optimization techniques they use are the only techniques out there that work. Some will act with disdain if you even mention something outside of their “belief” system; SEO isn’t just an industry, it’s a religion.

Don’t believe me? Ask an SEO professional:

• If optimization is manipulating search (blasphemy)
• The difference between white hat, gray hat and black hat SEO (moral, average, immoral)
• How often you should check your SEO campaign (ritual)

The problem is devout SEOs only seem to see things in black and white…

Recently, the topic of comment spam came up – one of those “black and white” things. Out of curiosity, we looked at the information available online about the difference between comment spam and linking in the comments. Amazingly, no one really addresses links in the comments as anything other than spam. Although we may be called heretics, we’d like to take this opportunity to forward a different version of the story.

Comment Spam

Now, it’s easy to say, “There’s a fine line between comment spam and comment links.” However, once you sit and really think about it, the line isn’t so fine. The line is quite clearly defined, in fact.

Comment Spam in the Wild

This is from our own blog comment queue as an example of the truly crappy comment spam – all links with no attempt at all to look like a comment. However, Danny Sullivan wrote an article last year entitled Some Advice For Free Essay Writing Services – Write Better Comment Spam with several fantastic examples of comment spam in the wild.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is comment spam…

“… very weird comments appearing on your blog. The comments usually don’t make sense and they link to bizzare domain names. These comments are probably spam left by people (or automated spam bots) in an attempt to increase the target domains visibility on the search engines.” [WPDude, the WordPress Coach]

“It is done by automatically posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly accessible online discussion boards.” [Wikipedia: Spam in blogs]

“Comment spam is the term used to describe comments that people write as comments on blogs and forums that provide no content or comment of any value and are posted simply to provide links back to other sites.” [InsiderTactics: What is Comment Spam]

“Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are often irrelevant to the context value of the post.” [WordPress.org: An Introduction to Blogging]

“…many of whom use scripts or other software to generate and post spam. If you’ve ever received a comment that looked like an advertisement or a random link to an unrelated site, then you’ve encountered comment spam.” [Google Webmaster Central]

So, from the above sampling (and you can be sure most descriptions of comment spam are similar), you start to see common denominators:

• Usually don’t make sense
• Random and/or unrelated
• Provide no value
• Useless
• Often irrelevant

In other words, the type of comment spam we all know and love to bitch about.

Comment Links

Now, the problem with links in the comments is that they’ve been so abused “commenting” has become a curse word in SEO. Through the years, this practice (as an SEO technique) has been beaten into the dirt. Therefore, many ethical optimizers now say, “If a link is in a comment, that comment is spam.”

SEOs, webmasters – pretty much anybody who comes in touch with SEO -, seem to have forgotten about people. If you use the word link for example, you must automatically mean link building for link juice to help raise the ranking of your website through this SEO tactic.

However, comment links are very different from comment spam, in that they:

• Are used to continue a conversation
• Make sense to the context of the article
• Provide value to others
• Are useful
• Are relevant
• Are on topic

Example, again from our own blog:

Comment Links in the Wild

Other, non-SEO related meanings for the word link:

• the means of connection between things linked in series
• a fastener that serves to join or connect
• connection: the state of being connected
• associate: make a logical or causal connection
• connect: connect, fasten, or put together two or more pieces

A link is used to make a connection.

Your friend wrote an article about home repair; he mentions plumbing and a particularly touchy problem he’s having with the toilet flange. This reminds you of the time you had the same problem (or a similar one). You wrote a blog after that, describing your experience and how you solved the issue.

You post a comment in your friend’s blog “Hey, I know exactly what you’re going through. Solved this issue about 4 months ago – wrote a blog about to help others; it might help you. [link]”

Your friend would follow the link, read the blog and either a) return to their blog to reply to your comment or b) post a comment on your article page. Others visiting your friend’s blog would do the same – if they chose to comment.

They might write articles or otherwise mention your blog post about how to fix a toilet flange. They might find out they like your blog and bookmark it for future reading. They might even remember something they read or wrote and post that link in your friend’s (or your) blog, thus continuing the conversation and building a stronger community.

Now, here’s the question: why did you post that link? Did you post that link because you were greatly concerned with your SEO campaign and wanted to gain better ranking by posting your article? Or… did you post that link because you had something to share?

Ooo, ooo – Maybe, because the original article made a connection for you, or, a logical association!

Conclusion

As human beings it’s logical to want to share. When you read an article that moves you in some way (with humor, with anger, with sorrow), occasionally you are compelled to comment. Some of us are compelled to comment a lot, like the members of the Level343 team.

If, by the time you finish reading this piece, you’re still not sure about the difference between comment spam and comment links are, ask yourself this question: Did I come to the article to post a comment and build links?

If that’s the reason for you being on an article, you’re in danger of committing the SEO sin of comment spam. However, if you’re at an article to read it, are moved to comment, have written or read a piece that you want to share with others, and so post the link with your comment, this is not spam. This is communicating, engaging and building a community.

Hmm… Why is it that much of SEO keeps coming back to intent?

Now, let’s open up this conversation. What about you? Do you think, as some people (including SEO professionals) do, that links in a comment automatically make it comment spam? Is there ever a legitimate reason to share your own links on another’s site?

My cousin Guido - he don't like craphat. Dis week he's offerin' a 2 fer 1 special...

As Google’s Panda update (aka Farmer update) continues to cause upheaval, one tip keeps circulating through the industry, whispered from person to person. “Psst. Hey! Pssst! Tip – Get rid of your low-quality content! Pass it on!”

Now, really – shouldn’t that have already been taken care of? Shouldn’t we be past the days of such craphat SEO techniques like content spam? Come on, now – let’s grow a little, shall we?

For those that don’t recognize the term, craphat (in this example at least) is short for that crap SEO professionals should know better than to do, but do it anyway because they’re lazy SOBs. For some reason, these craphat SEO techniques just won’t die. They keep holding on – like that nasty, bitter, rich, 110-year-old relative nobody likes…

The ones listed below are just a few; there are plenty more out there. If you have a SEO “professional” talking about providing these SEO techniques for you, we’re so, so sorry. If you are a SEO professional still talking about these SEO techniques, dude – quit crapping on our industry, m’kay? Go find a different industry to use as your personal toilet.

1. Comment spam

This… this is ridiculous, people. It is 20 friggin 11 and you’re still sending crap to our blog that looks like this:

Comment Spam in the Wild

Oh yeah – that’s sexy. Give us some more comments like those to approve. That way, everyone who visits the blog can have visual proof how much we could care less about their user experience. Thanks, BinaDeandalah – let’s just put that where it belongs…

2. Content scraping

Panda on High, photo credits: Jessica (justjess17)

If someone puts an article up on some content farm like ArticleBase, well then, go ahead. Snag it; put it up on your site in its entirety. Try not to be a total skeez and leave the attribution link, though. They put those articles up there for just such a thing.

However, and this is important, if someone puts an article up on their site, copyrights it, says, “Don’t copy my stuff, m’kay?” and makes sure an attribution link pops up any time you copy/paste even a sentence, this is a hint. In case you miss the subtleties, this means, “Leave my crap alone. It’s only for my site and my audience.”

By the way – good luck with this practice now that Panda’s gone out. That big ole furry bear may look all nice and fuzzy, but he’s gonna be taking bites out of your site.

Now, what’s the matter with content scraping, as long as you give an attribution link? Everything. It’s friggin lazy – unless you own a topical news site or something, in which case you wouldn’t be using it for SEO and you wouldn’t be taking the whole damn article. If you’re using it for SEO, it’s a craphat technique that needs to die.

3. Article spinning

Oh yeah – and here’s another top craphat SEO technique we hate: article spinning. From the first sentence of this article:

• Spin one: … constantly on the cause pandemonium, one tip goes on circulating through the marketplace…
• Spin two: … continues to make upheaval, one tip continues spreading through sales…
• <Spin three: … is constantly on the cause uproar, one tip goes on going around through the market industry…
• Spin four: … is constantly on the induce upheaval, one pointer goes on going around through the market industry…
• Spin five: … continues to induce uproar, one tip goes along going around through sales…

Yes – that’s beautiful. Original content x 5 and you only had to write one article for it – or, better yet, scrape somebody else’s content, spin it 10 times and put it out there as original. – And now we’re going to quit this line of thinking because… ew. It’s dirty; it’s nasty; it’s a craphat SEO technique that should have given up the ghost years ago.

4. PageRank Sculpting

Yes, people are still trying to sculpt the way PageRank passes around their site with a little bit of “no-fo, mofo”. Sad, really. Even when Google (well, Matt Cutts, so same, same) officially says, “oh yeah, nofollow hasn’t worked that way for a year or so”, people still do it. He says, “PageRank sculpting isn’t recommended” (by the way, some of the comments in that link are friggin fantastified).

Now, by our definition, craphat SEO techniques are the ones that muck up the Web and make owning, operating or otherwise using a piece of the Internet a drag. So, maybe PageRank sculpting shouldn’t really be classified under this list. However, since it’s a serious waste of time when there are other, much more profitable tactics to follow – well, while it may not be craphat, we do have to put it under “dumbest ideas”.

5. Craphat, SEO Link Bait

You know, we really hate this – to the point that “craphat” is the nicest thing we can say about it. Craphat link bait should probably be clarified first, though. This isn’t link bait like, let’s throw a clickable title out there, pulling readers into an article that has the information promised, just not the way they expected it. Link bait is an acceptable practice, when done correctly and occasionally (the two key words, there).

What we mean is crap like this ending up in our SERPs:

Sounds like Mr. “I wish I could report” has a personal connection to the poor congresswoman, doesn’t it? Nah – he’s a brain injury lawyer; no connections, nothing to report, nothing worth while… No, just crappy, crappy, misleading, B.S. link bait. Bleh.

Conclusion

We know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But, without these SEO techniques, how can a SEO professional provide the results clients expect?” You’re probably batting your eyes innocently, too. “SEO is just so time consuming without this stuff,” you exclaim.

Yeah? Here, let us help you out with that by offering some sage SEO advice. Content: High quality, relevant, tasty, informative content. Relationships: building, creating, managing fantastic relationships. Tracking results; taking a long-term view; testing everything for what works best.

These are SEO techniques that last. If that’s not enough, we have an even better idea. Learn how SEO really works instead of sticking with a few craphat, tired old tactics… OR get out of the way and make room for optimizers who care about the quality of their clients’ sites.

What about you? Any SEO techniques you find ridiculous, disgusting or otherwise craphat? Share and share a like!

Infographic: Google Dance

You know – people talk about how SEO isn’t one of those things you can do once and then reap the benefits forever (I say people, but I mean SEO professionals).

We’ve talked about how search engines are constantly updating; it’s what they do. Spammers get more sophisticated, darn them; search engines have to evolve to combat spammers. Optimizers, marketers and site owners have to change to combat the evolution of the search engines. It’s a vicious, vicious circle.

Consequently, you have thousands of optimizers bracing themselves when rumors of another algorithm change rolls out. You have SEO professionals suffering Post-Traumatic Search Syndrome; they scream, “SEO is dead, is dead” every time algorithms change. It’s not their fault; it’s shellshock.

Those who’ve been around for a long time simply sigh. Major update or minor update, they know it’s simply time to do the Google Dance again.

Do the Dance – Do the Google Dance

A long time ago, back in ancient times (before the days of rolling updates), Google updated in bits and pieces. A major index update could take several days to complete. Meanwhile, you might see mild to wild fluctuations in the SERPs. 10 times a year, Google called all its data centers together, along with its index, cache and secondary indexes, and threw a big shindig – the Google Dance.

In August 2003, Google changed the way the index updates, from piece meal to rolling updates. In other words, Google is constantly updating; it’s only when the updates are major that most people really notice. – And some of Google’s updates have really been noticed…

If the updates of 2002 had names, it’s so far back in the annals of history nobody knows what they are. However, an update in September of 2002 was so horrific it caused people to cry on Webmaster World that PageRank was DEAD.”

Now, from what I could gather (which wasn’t much), this little update lowered search quality instead of raising it. Gasp – 404 pages showed up in the top 10! Of course, most of the people complaining were bloggers who, after finding out it was no longer as easy to manipulate Google’s results (Microsoft’s home page was #1 for “go to hell”), realized they didn’t have as much power as they used to.

Google Dances With Cassandra

It seems like Google learned its lesson, because the Cassandra update (2003) was a Google Dance with real foot-stomping movement. With Cassandra, Google targeted multiple links from the same site (the practice of cross-linking) . In thread after thread, SEOs and DIYers start tearing apart the changes. Here, important factors start to come out:

• Link Text
• Navigational Structure
• Page Title
• Links from different sites

Hmm… a couple tasty C blocks, anyone?

After that, we have the Dominic update, which ended up being a sort of “your guess is as good as mine” kind of thing. Everybody could see something was going on – search results were swinging wildly – but there seemed to be no real rhyme or reason. The 2002 update was mentioned as a related oops, as in, “This reminds me of that crapdate in ‘02.” However, once Esmeralda came along, things settled down.

Now, Cassandra, Dominic and Esmeralda came one right after another: April, May June. By the time Esmeralda wound down, optimizers, marketers and website owners were all happy to take a break. For four months, all they had to deal with was a little bit of movement here and there; the Google Dance, as they had come to call it, was no longer a matter of spasmodic movement across the floor.

Florida Update– Presidential Fail

The Florida update is probably branded in some veteran SEOs’ minds, and could be a partial reason for Post-Traumatic Search Syndrome. People concerned with ranking and indexation got up in the morning, turned on their morning Google and freaked out.

Pages that had been ranking high suddenly ceased to exist in the indexes. Relevance dropped; on-topic connections were as solid as baby Swiss cheese. Some of these sites didn’t even do anything to deserve it. The Hilltop Algorithm gets involved and the Austin update, and all of a sudden, all the easy SEO techniques were useless.

Sigh – gone were the days of free for all link farms. Stuffed Meta tags became a thing of the past. Hidden tags, invisible text… and a partridge in a pear tree.

Google, Jagger and Serious Changes

Okay, so Florida and Austin (2003/ early 2004) were a little bit murky – at least if you talked to optimizers. As we all know, however, Google never has cared about optimizers; they care about the searchers. They care about relevant results.

For the next two years, they went about tweaking here, twitching there, and otherwise trying to clean up the SERPS, return relevant results and combat spam for innocent searchers everywhere. In other words, they went about their divine, and yet civic, duty.

The Jagger update, which could safely be called the granddaddy of the SERPs we now know and love, was a serious change for SEO. One site makes a comment (which we absolutely love), “Search engine optimization has become more difficult than ever!”

HA! This was six years ago. It’s one of those, “you have NO idea” kind of things. Anyway, WebProNews had a good write up about it, listing quite a few things that may have/did change. (While reading, we found a fantastic little article from the Search Engine Watch blog, for those that want to reminisce or see what the olden days were like).

Mayday, Mayday –Suggest a Local Place for Caffeine! (i.e. Google 2010)

Good updates, poor updates, relevant, small or big, Google’s been busy. In 2009 alone, they made over 500 changes to the search algorithms. That’s a lot of changes.

In February 2010, Google sends out the message, “We’re updating our indexes, folks. We’re giving them a shot of caffeine.” Now, it’s important to note that Caffeine wasn’t an algorithm change. In actuality, Caffeine updated the search engine’s infrastructure. With the new index, not only are you getting “fresher” results, but your new page is being indexed faster, too.

Should we mention the Mayday release? Long tail query traffic lost for some, other sites getting jumps in ranking and traffic… the ensuing panic… Ah yes, and the smell of a new YouTube video from Matt Cutts on how to cover your butt if your site lost in the rankings. Ouch.

Then Google Places gets more emphasis. Video results start showing up – IN THE EFFIN results, mind, which sent the SEO world into a tizzy. Let’s not forget Google Real Time Search… not a true update, but a definite change, you might say.

Google says, yes, social counts affects ranking, and wasn’t that a kick in the tender parts for those who said social media was a crap idea.

Welcome to 2011 – Another Site Bites the Dust and Google Goes Nuts

You know, we’re only a few months into 2011. That’s just wild, because a lot has happened this year, and not all – or mostly – in updates. JCPenny, anyone? How about Overstock?

Then you have the Google Social Search update – all of a sudden, social isn’t just a signal, it’s a friggin RANKING FACTOR for personalized search! Yeah, yeah, so Facebook still isn’t in the results, but that’s SO not the point. The point is, your target market can be influenced by their peers, not just by your SEO campaign.

Let’s not forget the buying of BeatThatQuote and consequential penalization. WTH – but okay. Google has a reputation to maintain, they now own the site and it defies their own standards. Cool. How about the minor algo change Matt Cutts mutters about in a short blog, mentioning a potential 2% change? This algorithm targeted low quality scraper sites.

Finally, we have the Panda update, aka “Farmer” update. A full 12% of US results have been affected. The actual sites that lost out have shocked a lot of people. I’ll bet you, somewhere people are saying, “Associated Content? Oh, well yeah, sure. That makes sense – but Merchant Circle? OMG!”

Again, the way we do things is changing. For example, those who still link out to content farms might rethink that. Article submission, which hasn’t managed to die yet, is another technique that just bit the dust finally (not to be mistaken for submitting a single article to a legitimate place or guest blogging). These two are just the first two we can think of.

Conclusion

We didn’t cover all of the updates, but did try to gather enough for a solid overview. The point, as we walk through Google history, is to realize how fluid you – as an SEO professional, webmaster, site owner, search marketer – need to be to keep up with the fluctuations in search. It’s not a stable space to fill as an industry. You have to be flexible, on your toes, and willing to change your tactics.

We’re on the front lines, people. Researching, defining and creating any kind of SEO strategy is the first step in attacking the enemy. We may call it the Google Dance, but it’s war, plan and simple – where competing businesses can die a cold hard death if we win.

What do you think Google’s next update will target? Anything specific? Share your prognostications with our readers!

We haven’t tried to make it a secret that, among other things, we’re organic SEO content developers. As content developers, we’re always thinking of new ways to give our readers value. We hope we’re doing a good job of it!

Now, if you’re an SEO specialist dropping by to see what the competition is doing, you might want to take notes. This is good stuff, even if we do say so ourselves (and we do). You may already know it, but you might have forgotten, too.

Many of the articles we write starts with a question. Today’s question is this:

If you’re pumping out content like blogs, article, white papers, etc. all the time, do you ever stop to see what works? –And, even if you do, do you know how to tell the difference between performing and non-performing pages?

Not normal site pages, like products or buy now’s, but all the extra written content you put out. Is it really bringing in visitors? How can you narrow down what topics work best? What’s a blogger to do if you’re blogging for bucks?

Data Background for the SEO Article Archive

Since we’ll be using our own analytics for this exercise, let’s begin with a little background (this is also something you’ll have to do for your business blog).

In June 2010, the Level343 team decided to become our own client (HA! – yes, we can honestly say we’re the SEO professionals that SEO professionals go to). In other words, we took the time to layout a content strategy for the Article Archive. One of the first things we did was to set a separate area in our analytics program the tracks only the blog.

Now, we’re not going to air our dirty laundry, but let’s look at the progress over the past eight months:

• 2,409% increase in visits
• 2,526% increase in unique visitors
• 2,660% increase in pageviews
• 2,964% increase in unique pageviews
• 21.81% increase in time on site

This is excellent stuff. So what’s to be frustrated about? We’re hitting above every benchmark for sites similar to ours. What’s keeping us up at nights?

The knowledge that we could be doing better: there is always room for improvement.

Finding Content That Doesn’t Make the Grade

Follow along, if you will, as we dig to find sucky content. We’ve been writing online for quite some time now, so, you can trust when we say there’s bound to be at least one or two somewhere. Is this easy to do? No – we all have our favorite articles. We all have those blogs we finish with a, “Yes! The readers will love this!” Well, if you haven’t looked in a while, you might be unpleasantly surprised.

This is where we’re going: Google Analytics > Content > Top Content

Set your time line to include one year (or the period of time you’ve been tracking your content output). Once you’re looking at your content list you’ll need to decide what you’ll use as “high-performing” numbers – below 1,000? Below 100?

Then, click on Advanced Filter:

Advanced Filter allows you to filter pages in or out depending on a set of criteria, like so:

For this first round, we’ve set the pageviews to less than 100. This filters out all pages with pageviews of 100 or above, but we have pages showing up in the list that we don’t want to worry about. By the time the filter is created, we’ve excluded:

• Any page resulting from a search of the site
• Any category page
• Any page resulting from a visitor clicking “previous entries”
• Any page resulting from translations
• Any tag pages
• Pages with over 100 pageviews

Our finished filter looks like this:

This gives us a total of 184 articles to dig through to our heart’s content. 184 pages didn’t make the grade of 100 views or more. Our job (and your job as you follow along), is to figure out why.

Before we go further, export your file into an excel sheet, so you don’t lose the current set of information. Make sure your report is showing all the pages (or, at least, the first 500 if you have that many), by changing how many rows are shown at the bottom of the page. Then, export your file using whichever method is more convenient for you:

With this sheet saved, we move to the next step and find a page to start with.

Digging Deeper

Now, a lot of our low performing pages are from 2008 and 2009. The information may be outdated i.e. now inaccurate. To check this theory, we add the filter:

Of the 184 total pages, we have 45 that are 3 years out of date. We edit the filter for 2009, check the number, and then again for 2010 and 2011:

• 2008 – 45 pages
• 2009 – 57 pages
• 2010 – 69 pages
• 2011 – 9 pages

Because it’s most likely that the blogs from 2008 are no longer showing in the top 4 pages of the search engine index, this is where we’re going to start. It’s time to see whether we can rewrite, update and otherwise use the content, or if it’s just not worth it.

Using Bounce Rate

We still have 45 pages to choose from, so we have to narrow down a little bit more. Level343 implemented the 10 second bounce rate rule, which says, “If the visitor stayed on the page for more than 10 seconds, don’t consider it a bounce.” Because of this, we’re going to use the Bounce Rate as the “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” (click on the image for a larger view).

Our first article to work with has been identified:

New To Internet Marketing? Basics of SEO II

Repairing Sucky Content

When this article was originally written, we were awfully proud of it. However, businesses evolve, the industry evolves and our writing skills evolve. Here is where you have to be unbiased. Look at your content and compare it to what you’re putting out today. Could it be less… sucky?

With The Basics of SEO, the answer is yes. It could be:

• Updated
• Given length
• Filled with more information
• Have a stronger tone

Is it worth the repair? Oh yes – because this topic is ongoing. Therefore, we’ll rewrite, edit, tear apart and basically write a new one. Keep tuned for it!

Conclusion

No matter how pleased you are with your traffic and statistics, you could always be doing better. As you grow and evolve in your writing skills (or grow to where you can afford to hire someone with SEO copywriting skills – whichever), your old content will stand out like a sore thumb.

If you’re in marketing, SEO, or content development we would love to hear how you mine for your elusive golden nuggets. Remember: sharing great content and knowledge keeps your readers coming back. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

SEO? What's SEO?

SEO as a part of a digital marketing strategy cannot be ignored by any marketing organization. SEO, though a subset of online marketing, has a completely different character of its own. People are more likely to click on an organic search result compared to a listing under Ads. The website owners are allocating increased budgets to digital marketing, and ranking for organic search is one of their primary goals.

Well planned and chalked out SEO campaigns require sizeable budgets and every business would surely ask for the return on the amount invested in the SEO campaign. Complete ROI from any SEO cannot be calculated with 100% accuracy, as any good SEO campaign gives you good web visibility in addition to the SERPs, establishes your online brand, helps you to establish an online reputation and have a global reach. The total benefit from all this cannot be converted in metrics.

But, you can get an adequate idea about the ROI by first and foremost deciding the primary objectives of the SEO campaign.

Do you want your SEO campaign to result in :

• Increase in direct sales?
• Generation of more leads?
• Driving more traffic?
• Building you an online brand ?

The answer to these questions will make things easier for the SEO as well as you. The SEO will know what he needs to focus on and you can also know which metrics to keep track of, in order to to measure the success of the SEO campaign.

A complete web centric SEO campaign, which focuses on achieving organic rankings by etching the right quality digital foot prints on the web for your website, will – in the long run – give all the above mentioned benefits. If the priorities are set then the whole campaign has a direction and can be geared , monitored and managed accordingly.

Options...

If the priority is to achieve an increase in direct sales or generate more leads then the SEO (along with working on the on‐page and off‐page optimization for ranking on the SERPS) has to also focus on the following issues :

• Are the landing pages well-designed for the targeted keywords ?
• Do the landing pages have the requisite info. so that the visitor can make a decision to buy?
• Does the website have easy online payment options?
• Does it have simple and small forms to fill to register?
• Are the leads generated being attended to and getting the necessary info from the staff when they call or email? This is important,  in case the visitor needs to confirm something before buying.
• Are all inquiries via phone or email, generated as a result of SEO, being recorded?
• How many of such leads converted into sales?

All this is possible when the SEO and the client can work with a mutual understanding; there will be a lot of data in this case, which the client company will have to give to the SEO to calculate the ROI and gauge the success of the SEO efforts.

If the priority is to drive more traffic and to establish an online brand then the focus should be on :

• social media integration
• A well managed and maintained blog. As regular posts on informative topics related to your industry can surely drive the targeted traffic and also with the help of social media you can promote the post and generate a good WOM.
• A high engagement level on Twitter and Facebook
• Sharing views on other blogs of your industry which put forward you viewpoint and establish your identity.
• Posting guest posts and thereby reaching out to other communities in your industry

Eventually, a genuine and well planned SEO campaign will undoubtedly give the website all the above mentioned benefits. However, setting priorities and an immediate objective helps in designing the path to follow so the SEO can focus on the priorities of the client.

Brussels By Night: by Ben Heine

It used to be you only had one search to target – the main search page. If you wanted to rank for a specific term, you could only rank on the regular SERPs. Now, you have plenty of places on the search engines you can target. Images, blogs, discussions, real time search, Places and videos are just a few places outside of the normal SERPs. You don’t just grab the traditional SERPs anymore; now you grab hold of any search you possibly can.

However, having said that, keep these things in mind:

You can’t (or shouldn’t) try to optimize for everything.

Pick vertical searches that have an affect on your market. For example, we recently checked real time search for “Italian real estate” and found little conversation about it. This points to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, FriendFeed and Twitter aren’t the best places to target for this particular market.

Blogs, however, brought back a lot of information, as did Videos and Discussions. What does this tell us? The conversation isn’t happening for the Italian real estate market on Twitter. It’s happening in discussion forums, on blogs and through video presentations. We might include these areas in our next campaign for the client.

Videos don’t optimize like websites.

The meta description of a video doesn’t seem to matter in terms of ranking. This doesn’t mean you don’t fill it out – just don’t expect a huge spike in ranking because of it. However, testing has shown that the title and page title DO matter, and need to be as detailed as you can make it in a short amount of space.

You also have to decide whether you’re going to host the video on your server or post it on places like YouTube. On top of that, if you decide to host the video on your site, you’ll need to create a video site map and submit it to Google. Unlike regular content, Google won’t index the video unless you tell the search engine “video content here”.

Track and organize your content offerings.

If you have PDFs on your site, you need to have that written down somewhere. If you have an Excel sheet, that information needs to be wherever the info on the PDF is. The same can be said for eBooks, infographics and other images, videos, blogs, articles, whitepapers, product writeups, radio shows, pod casts, webinars – you get the picture.

Each one of these content offering types can be optimized – and should be. It may take a few extra minutes, but that little bit of time per piece can add up to big traffic if done right. Mark what the content is, where it went and how it was optimized. Don’t let a piece go out without this information.

Inventory your content and decide which type brings more back.

Some types of content creation can take an enormous amount of time (video production, for example). Before you jump on the bandwagon of this type of content or that, see what you have so far. Look at how well these things performed.

For that matter, look at the competition. What are they putting out? Can you compete, and would it be worth it if you tried? You don’t want to break your budget trying to hit all the search spaces your competitors are hitting, so discretionary spending is important.

Be meticulous.

This goes along with the “track and organize” bit. You don’t have to make sure you hit each search space once a week. However, you do have to make sure each time you hit a search space that you do so with completely optimized, user-friendly content. Before you send anything out, make sure all the t’s are crossed and I’s dotted. It might even be helpful to create a checklist to go down for each type of content.

Always have goals in mind.

You could pour content into the dark whole of the Internet and hope something floats to the top. You could, but there’s a better way. Set up goals for your content. What do you want it to do for your business, and how do you expect it to achieve those goals?

Create a content strategy, outlining what, where, when, why and how, along with a few choice benchmark metrics. “My site has [number] traffic. I want to double it within 6 months. I’m going to do this by 1…2…3…”

Anytime you have a chance to fill in a descriptive area, do so.

Did you know Excel allows you to add information in the Properties tab? So does Word, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe PDF, for that matter. Any time you create a new piece of content, look for a Properties option. If you find it, fill it out!

Save the file name with “descriptive” in mind. For instance, “10-content-development-steps.doc” is a lot more descriptive than “document1.doc”. When you upload your content, use the same information as you did inside the program, and be descriptive in the page title and URL, as well, if possible.

Conclusion

It’s funny. In 2006, people were talking about vertical search in terms of search engines separate from Google and Bing. In fact, marketers were warning that Google and Yahoo seemed to be ramping up for some seriously competitive vertical search spaces. Well, they were half-right. Because of all the changes over the past 5 years in search engines, SEO, marketing, social media and so on, it’s hard to remember this is still a young industry. If you count ARPAnet (1969), it’ll be 42 this year. If you wait until ARPAnet changed to TCP/IP, it’s not even 30.

With the growth in the past 25+ years, does it make you wonder what’s coming up? For that matter, what have you done to keep up with the constant changes? How has your site changed with the Internet? Share your stories with our readers!

Delving into rel=”me” and other microformats, looking for indicators in the social graph that might influence how you search.

How does it work?

Through XHTML Friends Network (XFN) & Friend of a Friend (FOAF), the Social Graph API looks for relationships between web properties, whether you control that relationship or not. rel=”me”, amongst other microformats, are added to any hyperlink where you wish to indicate a relationship. You can set how the link is related to you (co-worker link, friendship, parent, child, etc.) You can even create your own mix.

Search Engine use of XFN and FOAF

If you have a Google profile and you have added your sites, there is a checkbox available for each site that says, “This is a profile about me”. When selected, a rel=”me” is added to the link within your profile. You control this and any other sites you may want to add.

Beyond your connected sites that you’ve added to your Google profiles, profiles within other properties of Google also makes use of XFN or FOAF. Buzz, Maps, Picasa, Youtube and any others that you have opted to publicly share your information, also share the public relationships. You can, of course, control what you share through your Google accounts dashboard.

Now what of the sites you don’t control?

Well Quora is a good example. As soon as you have set up a profile on Quora, the rel=”me” is already set up on your behalf within your profile page. Everytime you connect with someone new Quora a, rel=”contact” will be added. To see this for yourself, click either of the links under those you follow or who follow you and view the source.

Congratulations you are now part of the Social Graph via Quora!

So how does this affect my searching behaviour?

To put Quora to a completely unscientific and very simple test I was looking for an exact match for “How can a lazy SEO get a million high quality links in a few weeks time?” (instant off/signed in) which was a question posted on Quora by Barry Adams. I am connected to Barry via Twitter and Quora and I can see this relationship via my direct connections from links listed within my Google profile.

However, the search did not trigger the social circle within the SERP. Nor did a direct search for the exact phrase yield any results from a direct social search. Realtime results showed only my original tweet from the 5th January; this was not what I was expecting. I expected the SERP to show Barry`s face smiling back at me.

Is This Thing On?

I know Google’s Social Circle Beta works, because If I search for “Barry Adams” I get him smiling back at me. How long does it take before I get Barry smiling back at me for my original query, though? Well, as it turns out, I couldn`t.

So, are we to take it that Quora is weak signal in the Social Graph? That would be a bad assumption to make based on one single search, but I am yet to see any of Quora`s Q`s or A`s show up within my personalized Social Circle. Quora is still relatively young, so the jury is still out.

So What of XFN and FOAF in the future?

Beyond Google’s use of Twitter and Facebook within realtime results (and the odd SERP), we seem to be still at the early stages of Social Media. “Early stages” as in, it’s still growing as an immediate presence in our regular organic searches. With the pace at which search engines move these days, it would not shock me for XFN and FOAF to be huge in the future.

Effects on search behaviour. We already know personalised search has an effect on what we search for and social media signals are a ranking factor. So, is it all about keeping a tight, relevant network of who you follow? Staying on topic of the searches you are targeting? Wouldn`t that take the fun away from the whole purpose of “social”?

Using XFN and FOAF as a Tool to Rank?

Declaring your web properties on the sites that you control through use of the rel=”me” may give indications of relevance in the grand scheme of G`s algo, but it’s a weak one.

Further Reading

Alan Bleiweiss has already brought a great resource together explaining the use of microformats in more detail.

Last month we talked about using analytics data to conquer the task of writing dynamic content and beat writer’s block. Today, we’re going to dig a little deeper into our analytics for more information. How many ways can you find the seed of life in your numbers? How many other root words can you find that you haven’t previously thought of?

In this article, we’ll walk through one of our processes for measuring site quality. By the end of the how to, we’ll discover:

• what type of content we currently have that brings in strong traffic (our top ten list for the day)
• a non-performing page that needs repurposing, updating or deletion
• new key terms we haven’t yet targeted
• at least five new topics for our next blogging cycle

Get ready to follow along – learn what to look for! Grab a pen and paper, because here goes nothing! (Note: click on any image throughout this article to get a larger view)

Understanding Visitor Behaviors – Where Are They Going?

Okay, so you know you’re getting visitors, but do you know what they’re doing when they get to your site? You obviously hope they’re getting along with the business of visiting – reading content, clicking to other pages, spending time, book marking, buying, what have you –, but are they?

Peaks, Valleys and Annotations

Something Google Analytics has that many site trackers don’t  is the ability to make annotations (which is why we’re using GA for this walkthrough). Each time you start a campaign, send out a blog or change something on your site, you can make an annotation and mark the occasion. This information becomes invaluable when you go in to see how well (or how poorly) your site is performing.

The image shows an example of these peaks and valleys, as well as annotations. Our Google Analytics shows a huge spike on January 6th, followed by a smaller upward trend on the 7th. Luckily, we had added the annotation that on the 6th we posted “Top SEO Women 2011”. We assumed the spike in traffic mainly came from this article, and further digging verified this information.

What if you haven’t done any annotations?

How do you figure out what caused a spike if you forgot to annotate something? It happens; we get busy with client work and keeping up on the annotations gets lost in the background. What do you do then?

Digging into the Data

Let’s look at a peak with no annotation. Further up the chart, we see another peak with no explanation.

The first thing we look at is the day (not date). It’s a Monday, which might have something to do with what looks like a peak. We know from understanding our visitors that most readers come during the week. Saturday and Sunday are historically quiet days for our site. However, this doesn’t explain the difference in numbers from Friday to Monday. We have to dig deeper.

Asking the Right Questions

We set the date range to the single day. This clears out all the information gathered about any other day since tracking begin. Our job now is to answer these questions:

• Where did the visitors come from? – This points to which referrers may bring better amounts of traffic to your site.
• What did they look at? – Which pages brought this amount of attention, and is it something you can replicate?
• How long did they stay? – If they only stayed a few seconds, they probably didn’t find what they were looking for.
• Did they visit any other pages on the site? – This indicates one of two things. One, they found what they wanted and decided to surf the site. Two, they didn’t find what they needed on that page, but thought they might be able to find it elsewhere on your site.

Content Data

To answer these questions, we’re going to do several things. First, look at pages visited: Content > Top Content. Here, we’re going to stop, because we found something interesting:

The Top Content section automatically shows the top ten. At the heading, you can answer the rest of your questions. The average time on the page for January 24th was 2 minutes and 37 seconds; for a blog, this is pretty decent. Our average exit is 71.96%, meaning the visitor left from the same page they landed on.

Now, our URLs are set up to mark the day, month and year of the blog. We can see right off that our top page was an article posted that day, which got almost 30% of the traffic. People spent an average of 5 minutes on the page (indicating they actually read the article). A high percentage then left; they found what they were looking for and either bookmarked for later or just left the site.

We’re happy with these stats. Of course, like anyone else we’d like to see more traffic, but it’s not half bad. In fact, things are pretty much normal and self-explanatory until we get down to #7. The article received 9 unique page views, but out of those 9 views, we have 0 time on page. Google Analytics says that all nine left from that page as well.

What happened here? The page also has an unusually high bounce rate. Although we don’t focus on this factor, all of them together point out there’s something wrong with this page. Is it the content? The images?

Any time you come across a page with this kind of data, you want to add it to a file of “to visit”. We use an Excel sheet and copy all the data with the link, but you can use whatever tool you feel comfortable using. We’re starring this page as a problem page to revisit.

Keywords Data

Now, there are other sources of data to look through, such as entrance sources. Clicking on the number one page link tells us how people found that page. This is great information, because it helps you pinpoint what referrers bring the most traffic and where you might want to talk about your next piece of content.

The last data we’re going to look at, however, is keywords. Now, for this article, most of our referrers were other sites, not search engines. What we want, however, is to add to our list of potential key terms to target, so that’s what we’re looking at.

By setting the “none” property in the list to “Landing Page”, we can see the keyword they came in on, what page they landed on, and get a good idea of whether we’re fulfilling the needs of those visiting from search.

With the exception of a few terms, it doesn’t seem like our content is meeting the needs of the searcher based on the top ten terms.

For example, the key term “how can I do off page or onpage seo” sent the visitor to “can I just do on page SEO and tell off page to take a hike”. What we’re looking at is different thought processes. They wanted to know how to, and we gave them the answer that it just has to be done. In this case, “how to do off page or on page SEO” is an article we might focus on in the near future.

“Characteristics of authority” and “characteristics of a good quality blog” are also great examples. They were sent to “8 characteristics of high quality link building”, which isn’t relevant to what they were looking for. Here are two more article topics we can focus on.

Others, such as “comscores yellow pages 2010”, we’re going to ignore. It doesn’t have anything to do with our site. If they come from that term, maybe they’ll find something interesting, maybe they won’t, but these visitors aren’t our target market.

Conclusion

Let’s recap. In the walkthrough for this article, we’ve discovered:

• what type of content we currently have that brings in strong traffic (our top ten list for the day)
• a non-performing page that needs repurposing, updating or deletion
• new key terms we haven’t yet targeted
• at least five new topics for our next blogging cycle

As you go through your own discovery and analytics, watch for “trigger points” like the ones we found. Now that you have all the steps, open up your Google Analytics and start digging!

When was the last time you had an Eureka! moment about your site, terms or content? What do you use to make sure you’re providing readers with strong content? Tell us about it!

How does your site stack up?

It’s a common question, and sometimes I wonder if there’s an easy way to explain the (at least) 10 different disciplines needed for a true website evaluation. There are agencies that will do it for you, of course, but unless you’re a fortune 100 + company with a marketing department, sales force and, yes, IT department with a big budget, it’s not an easy task.

If you have a small business, that’s a tall order because you don’t have the time or the budget, nor do you know the fundamental basics of website evaluation – or maybe you do. Either way, it’s something you can learn through trial and error, or by reading on trustworthy blogs.

From the consumer viewpoint, does the information you give on your site affect their attitude? It’d be interesting to know. Basically, are they using your call to action? Are they downloading your eBooks? Are they horrified when they land on your homepage?

If they have to go digging to find information important to them, rest assured you’re already failing. If you can give them a reason to stay, at the very least, however… For example, if you have a business-to-business site, are you giving them valuable information they can only get from you? If so, then you have some kudos going for you.

You have to think like your consumer. You have to imagine how they got to your site. Once there, are they engaged? Are you giving them a reason to stay for more than a few seconds? Could you add anything to get them more engaged, like recommendations, satisfaction surveys and other information?

First Impressions

A site evaluation always starts with first impressions, as if you were the casual (or not so casual) visitor. When you open your site, you have to act as if you’ve never seen it before. This is easy for us, because we haven’t. For you – not so much.

Things to look at:

• Navigation – Is it easy to find things? Create a list of questions based on what you think visitors might come to your site for. How easy is it to find your answers?
• Content – Is the content engaging? Does it grab your attention with clean “draw the eye” layouts, such as bullets and paragraph headings? Would it keep your readers satisfied?
• Attractors – What are you using to get them to your site? Link building, guest posting, social networks, etc. Hint – don’t rely on search engines alone.
• Findability – What do you look like in relation to your competition? Where do you fall in the SERPs?
• Making Contact – This is very important, especially if you have an eCommerce site. Do you give your readers a way to contact you? Make sure you have things in place to remember the buying preferences of your users.
• Browser Compatibility – Does your site look the same across multiple browsers? As a sampling, you have Internet Explorer 6 – 9, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera. Is your site skewed when you navigate through the different browsers? If you don’t know, you’d better start looking.
• Code Difficulties – Do you have a lot of errors in your code? These could seriously slow down your site. Check for W3C Validation. Having unbroken code may not help your ranking, but it can help your user experience.
• User Satisfaction – Are your visitors engaging with you? This could be through blog commenting, Twitter, Facebook – any connections. Mashable does a great job of getting people to engage. Some may think Mashable is on overkill, but with millions of hits a day, they’re doing something right.

Useful Tip: Partner with like-minded services. Don’t be afraid of competition. With 1.9 billion users on the World Wide Web, there’s enough to go around.

Evaluating Content

Once you find out the answers to the above, you have to also evaluate content. This is extremely important, because content makes the Internet world go ‘round. Here are a few things to look at and use as sound benchmarks:

• Accuracy – How accurate is the information on each page? Why was the page written? If it wasn’t written by you, can you contact the author and verify the accuracy?
• Authority – Who published the page, if it wasn’t you? Are the person’s qualifications listed?
• Objectivity – What are the goals/objectives of the page? Does the page’s content meet these goals/objectives? What opinions are expressed, and are they pointed out to be opinions? Look at the page as an infomercial – whom was it written for and why?
• Currency – How current is the page? Has it been updated to meet current information? If there are links on the page, are they current and unbroken?
• Coverage – If there are links on the page, are they relevant to the page’s information? If special software is need to view some of the page, how much is being missed if you don’t have the software? Is there a balance between the number of images and the written content? Are the citations correct?

Although other areas are included in a website evaluation, such as design, the above are major areas that can affect your conversion/engagement/attraction rates. By looking at these areas, you can get a strong idea of what needs to be changed, tweaked and improved upon. Pick an area to get started on and test, test, test!

Walking the line

The line between reaching the search engines and reaching visitors is incredibly thin. Trying to reach search engines with SEO can alienate both, while trying to reach just the visitors can leave your site unseen in the SERPs. What’s a webmaster to do? How does it all come together for a strong return on investment?

In this article, we’re going to explore several areas that go into strong website ROI. Strap on your calculators, pens, pencils and notepads, ladies and gents – here we go.

Internet User and Site Statistics: 2000 – 2010

Used to be, you could put up a website and at least get a small, though steady stream of visitors. Yes, there was competition, but not near as much as there is today. How many businesses are online? How many are your direct competition? How many are actively walking that thin line?

Internet User Growth

I’m not sure anyone really has those statistics; especially since any site drawing in a little money is considered a business. However, while we don’t know the number of businesses, we do know the average number of people. Consider these statistics, taken from InternetWorldStats:

Internet User Statistics

Imagine what will happen in the next ten years. Many are online buyers, some are just web surfers, others are researchers, but they’re all out there looking for something.

Online Site Growth

What we also know, somewhat, is the number of sites on the Web, thanks to the Netcraft Web Server Survey:

Netcraft web server survey

• In 2000, there were less than 25.6 million sites.
• By the end of 2010, there were almost 256 million.
• In 2010 alone – from January to December -, Netcraft reported almost 49 million new sites added to the Web.

The Netcraft statistics are only based on those servers who accurately reported their site numbers, so the numbers may actually be higher. Imagine what the site count will be next year?

Walking the Line Between Search Engines and Visitors

Where do these Internet statistics tie together? With such a strong growth in sites on the Web, it becomes obvious why business owners use search engine optimization. So much competition is vying for important search space; who wouldn’t use whatever they can to get ahead of that competition?

What isn’t clear – especially with the huge number of people using the Internet -, is why so many people forget the visitor when implementing SEO…

Don’t Forget the Visitor

Search engines are not your best friend. They’re a tool, to be used like any other tool. When you forget about your visitors and target the SEs instead – well, it’s like trying to talk your hammer into buying your roofing repair services.

Online business is like competing with each room in a physical competitors building. You’re not just competing with the whole site; your fight breaks down to the individual pages of the competitor’s site.

So, let’s say you’ve implemented SEO on your site and are ranking in the top five. Your potential visitor will enter a search query and find your site listed with 9 others – sort of. They’ll see a title, a description snippit, a link and a site preview image.

Depending on the term(s) used, however, they may also see:

• A map of nearby locations
• A list of local links
• Reviews
• Images
• Videos
• Book Results
• Other potential search terms
• More stuff than you can shake a stick at

They see all this stuff because the search engines don’t care about your site. They don’t even care about your competitor’s site. What the search engines care about is growing and making money. To do this, they bring what their algorithms conclude are the most relevant results for a search query.

Oddly enough, this is what your potential visitor cares about, as well – the most relevant results for their search query. What you have to do is convince them that your site is the most relevant. Is “keyword, keyword, keyword, keyword” in the title tag going to do that? How about “Keyword is keyword, but keyword, keyword, key term, phrase isn’t” in the description? I’m sure you already know the answer.

So how does it all come together? How do you pull in all the necessary parts of the online formula for ROI?

1. Target the visitor first – always. The search engines come second.
2. Use the keywords in the title, but in a way that they make sense to the visitor. A whole bunch of words separated by commas isn’t just messy and often confusing; it’s unprofessional. You’re running an online business – show you’re serious about it.
3. Use a piece of your content with your keyword/phrase as your description – this helps with SEO, relevance and readability Example taken from this article: “With such a strong growth in sites on the Web, it becomes obvious why business owners use search engine optimization. What isn’t clear is why so many people forget the visitor when implementing SEO.”
4. Go ahead – use keywords/terms in the title on your page. After all, if you’re optimizing correctly, your primary term for the page should show up in the title anyway. Just don’t stuff them! There are people reading this page, for cryin’ out loud. If I see “Keyword, keyword, keyword” for a page title, I’m going to click away. IMO, if you blow me off to target the SEs, you don’t care about answering my needs – so I don’t care about giving you my money.
5. Yes, use your terms in your content. However, if your terms don’t fall naturally in the content then, honey, you’re not using the right terms for the topic. If you find yourself going through and putting your key terms in after you’ve written the whole piece – well, you’re not optimizing, in my opinion. You’re still keyword stuffing.
6. If you can’t figure out how to write the content and implement SEO without ruining how it reads, hire a professional. If the professional turns in something you wouldn’t want to sit and read on another site because it’s stuffed with crap and keywords, don’t use it! Fire the “professional” and get a referral from a serious optimization/copywriting company.
7. Don’t allow things based solely on whether it would help your SEO campaign. Ask first if it would help the visitor. Here’s an example: if you want to do a link exchange with a relevant company, that’s all fine and dandy. However, instead of throwing it up on a page called “links” (and I’m rolling my eyes here), try using it in content in a way that’s relevant and useful for your visitors.
8. Don’t get stuck on the whole “they aren’t linking to me, so I’m not linking to them” idea. If a link is relevant, use it. If you ask the other site to link back and they say no or ignore you, don’t remove the link. If it was relevant enough to use before they said no, it’s relevant enough now. Base your outbound linking on what’s useful for your visitor. Anything else is petty, and there’s no room for it in professionalism.
9. If you’re ranking on the front page of the SERPs and not getting traffic, you’re not appealing to potential visitors. The search snippit is your potential visitor’s first introduction to your site. It has to give a great first, second and third impression.
10. Use link bait titles sparingly. Just because a title is shocking, engaging, interesting enough to bring visitors, doesn’t mean the content is enough to keep them there. Mislead people enough times and they’ll never trust your headlines again.

When trying to reach a high level of ROI, you have to take all the elements of the online equation and put them in order of importance. Visitors should always come first. Strong content and relevant topics are a good way to target them. Search engines come second, using a dose of SEO, but never forgetting the visitor.

It’s difficult to balance everything you need for strong search engine placement, happy visitors and high ROI. However, if you keep your main focus on the visitors and relevance, the rest will follow.

We don't need them do we?

You have about 70 characters worth of space in your title tag and approximately 155 in your description. What are you doing with it?

Even as far back as 2007, maybe more, people have been saying Meta tags aren’t a factor in search engine placement. In the Google Webmaster Forums, a commenter wrote:

“One problem that I could see that not having a description would cause, which is the same as not having meta-keywords is that most online “SEO evaluation tools” give you a shitty score if you don’t include things like that. Things that haven’t made a difference for so long one wonders when the “SEO evaluation tool” was made in the first place.

For me, I think I’ll save triple the time, forget about meta-keywords, which I already do, forget about meta-description, which I haven’t seen the point of for a long time and to save the most time of all, give up on out of date so called “SEO” tools.”

Meta Titles and Descriptions – A Moment of Sarcastic Commentary

I won’t lie; I was floored by this comment. If this was the thought three years ago, how much has that thought process grown since then? If Meta tags don’t mean anything at all and are useless, why is Google still talking about them?

You don’t see the point in Meta tags? Please allow me a moment of sarcastic commentary.

You don’t care about the only thing potential visitors will see when putting in a search query because the search engines don’t use them as a ranking factor? So “about” is an acceptable title for you as a way to introduce your company? Not even “about company”, but just “about”?

And you’re okay with the search engines picking anything out of your content to use as a description for your company, right? You think, “All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed…” is going to give potential visitors an inviting, warm, fuzzy feeling?

People, when you’re running an online business, the rules change. Everything you put out there is a representation of your company. Your meta information, your content, the images you use, the comment you made on XYZ blog – everything.

Take links, for instance. Any time you link out – from your site, from your social media account – it counts as an endorsement. You’re endorsing the page you link to. The search engines look at it that way and, more importantly, visitors look at it that way.

So think about it. Regardless of whether search engines use your Meta information or not, it should still matter to you. Your title and description tell how you feel about your business, and how you want visitors to feel about your business. If you want to be taken seriously as a professional, take your online business seriously. #thatisall

Meta Data Building Blocks

If you’re going to build an active, engaging, growing online business, you have to start with the basic building blocks. Your Meta data is one of these blocks, and it has its own foundations.

1. Don’t leave your title blank. From the Google Blog: “If you don’t specify a <title> tag, then Google will try to create a title for you. You can probably do better than our best guess, so go for it: take control of your <title> tag!”
2. Different pages deserve different tags. Use unique tag lines (titles) and descriptions for each one. This may sound time consuming, but if you add this information as soon as the page is created, all it takes is a few seconds.
3. Tags and titles are there to accurately describe a page’s content – use them wisely.
4. Don’t stuff your Meta info – ever. In fact, if your Meta information doesn’t affect your rankings, then why are you stuffing them with keywords anyway? Instead, use your keywords, title and description wisely, to incorporate relevance, readability and user engagement.
5. Write each title and description as if they were an ad for that particular page. How would you entice visitors to click? What would it take you to click through to a page? Think about it!
6. For individual product pages, include non-changing facts (for example, listing manufacturer information or the number of available colors for a shirt).
7. Don’t repeat the title in the description. These are two separate areas, and repetition is just wasting this precious space. Use the description to enhance the title and give a more accurate representation of the information contained on the page.
8. Make descriptions as descriptive as possible. Remember, you’re representing your company and brand, here. Take the opportunity to show you’re serious about what you do.
9. Try not to use quotes, dashes or other non-alphanumeric characters. These characters may end up have your description truncated at the character used.
10. I am including one of Gabriella’s favorite infographics about best title tag formulas.

Finally, it’s important to note that Google acknowledged they don’t use Meta information for ranking purposes. Instead, they use it for relevance to a search. So, they may pull your site into the results for a search query because of your meta information, but they won’t put you on page one because of it.

This should actually come as a relief to many, because it leaves you fully able to focus on the potential visitor instead of the search engines. –And, as you know, the visitor is much more likely to buy than the search engines.

Top SEO Women 2011

2011 is here, and I know many of you have been trying to get your budgets, online presence and campaigns off the ground. I’d love to tell you it’s easy, but I’d be lying to you. Rather than pour a whole bunch of information out today, I decided I’d add to our list of Top SEO Women instead.

Articles throughout 2010 have been written about women and how they contribute to our community. Our post on Top SEO Women for 2010, for example, got a lot of hits and is still being linked to today.

As you peruse this list, I encourage you to take the time and search these women out. Connect with them. Not only are they beautiful people, but they are also movers, shakers and just plain intelligent.

One of the best articles out there that has touched on women online is Kikolni’s (aka Kristi Hines) Kikolani – 125 Fearless Women Bloggers. Within this list are entrepreneurs, experts, CEOs and published authors, among others. It’s an article well worth reading.

Another place to find a list of fantastic women bloggers is the SOB A-Z Directory. For years, Liz Strauss has had awards for Successful Outstanding Blogger (SOB), and handed them out to many men and women.

Although these two places have excellent links to inspirational writers, I’d like to focus on women just in the SEO community. I hope that we can continue to add some amazing women in our industry – women you can come to know and respect.

Who Are They?

Lyena Solomon Also known as @lyena on Twitter, she’s a wonderful woman I’ve personally met. I was blown away by how such a petite woman had so much dynamite information, especially when it comes to Google Analytics and PPC. She is also bilingual, with a strong command of Russian and English – she speaks both fluently I might add.

Kim Krause Berg Also known as @kim_cre8pc on Twitter, you’ll find Kim’s footprints in several blogs, forums and social feed. Organic SEO, information architecture, usability, search engine marketing practices – the woman knows more about search and usability than one person has any right to remember.

Melissa Fach Also known as @SEOAware on Twitter, Melissa is the owner of SEO Aware, LLC. I’ve been following her wonderful, information Twitter feed regarding SEO. She has a no nonsense approach and is always there for a good laugh or an even greater link.

Michèle Ménard Also known as @michele_menard on Twitter, I’ve noticed she’s one of the few women in Italy keeping up with what’s going on in search. She’s a bilingual Italian/French online communications specialist, as well as a Web 2.0, SEO & social media expert.

Nichola Stott Also known as @NicholaStott on Twitter, this young woman was introduced to me in the SEO Dojo, a place where the real SEO’s hang out. Making her global mark in SEO and social media as the owner of The Media Flow, she’s also a speaker/blogger for State of Search, Search Engine Watch and SEO Chicks.

Jill Whalen Also known as @jillwhalen on Twitter. I’ve been reading her posts everywhere, and as one of our comments on the last post stated, we didn’t include her. We’re amending the oversight this year. Jill has been in search since search engine optimization began in the early 1990s. She’s CEO of High Rankings, the company she founded in 1995.

Rebekah May Rebekah is a fellow SEO warrior from the SEO Dojo and is also known as @rebekah_am. She’s an entrepreneur, SEO and marketing consultant. As well, she founded Whole-SEO, which helps small businesses leverage the power of the Internet to increase their exposure.

Debra Mastaler Debra is a regular on the Dojo and goes by @debramastaler on Twitter. She’s one of those people I like to think of as the backbone of all SEO efforts. She’s known as the link-building powerhouse. Debra creates strategies and tactics focused on increasing link popularity and brand exposure through creative link marketing.

Aleyda Solis Also known as @aleyda on Twitter, this young lady is a smart, informative online marketing enthusiast, and someone I enjoy chatting with from time to time. She lives in Madrid and works at @QDQ_com – SEO, Web Analytics and SEM Responsible.

The list from 2010 and today are just a few of the women out there in the world of search. Many work behind the scenes and aren’t known online. You may know someone like this, working next to you every day – the unsung feminine heroine who always gets the job done on time, without fail: the intelligent woman whose brain you pick whenever you have a question about search.

If you do, we’d like to hear about her. If you know someone we haven’t mentioned, tell us whom you think should be added to the list! I look forward to hearing from all of you and again, thanks for all your input.

This may seem elementary to some of our readers, but we’re getting more requests for “how to’s” on writing organic SEO content. Et voila!

Being prepared and knowing the basics will make your job moving forward that much easier. What follows is the brick and mortar of any great SEO content – the minimum you should do, in order to feel confident your page will be indexed, rank well in the SERPs and please visitors.

We’ll be using terms in this article that you may or may not know, however. Let’s clarify what these terms mean:

• Search Query – the word or words used by searchers to find information, products, etc. The search query answers the question, “What are you looking for?”

• SERPs – (S)earch (E)ngine (R)esult (P)age(s): the list of sites you get on the search engine after placing a search query.

• Key Word/Phrase – Your key word or phrase (combination of words), should be an accurate description of your page topic. This is also one factor search engines use to determine relevance to a search query.

• Primary Keyword /Phrase – Your primary keyword/phrase is the word/phrase that accurately describes your entire site or section of site. For example, if your entire site is about home repair, this would probably be your primary phrase. As well, if you have subsections, such as information on tools, your primary phrase for that subjection might be “home repair tools”.

• Keyword Density – a percentage showing the number of times your key word/phrase shows up throughout a single page of content, based on keyword/total number of words ratio

• Keyword Research – Finding viable (high search/ medium-low competition, medium search / low competition) keywords. These should be relevant to your site. Setting a minimum level of search volume should help you greatly narrow down your prospects.

• Search Volume – the average number of searches for the key word or phrase per month

• Keyword Stuffing – the excessive use of keywords in titles, descriptions and/or content.

• Click-through – When visitors click on a search result and land on a site page, article, blog, etc.

Elements of an Organically Optimized Page

An organically, or “naturally” optimized page has four main parts: the meta title, meta description, body and link structure.

Meta/ Page Title

The main purpose of any title is to create a large rate of click through from the SERPs. The secondary purpose is to rank high in the SERPs for the page. Learn more about meta titles, descriptions and the importance of both with Three Rules of Engagement – Your Content and Your Audience.

• To meet the constraints of all search engines (the rules differ per engine), keep the length shorter than 72 characters. This includes spaces.

• Have at least four words per title. “Home”, for example, is a losing title, while “Learn SEO Content Writing Basics” may have more of a winning chance.

• Your primary keyword should show up at the beginning of the title. A high number of titles with your primary keyword will increase the chances of search engines finding your site relevant to any search including this keyword.

• Your key phrase should also show up in the title. A targeted key phrase will increase the relevancy of the page itself when searchers use the phrase. This will also increase the chance of a click-through.

Meta / Page Description

The main purpose of a description is to inform the potential visitor of what to expect when they visit a page and increase the click-through rate. The secondary purpose is as an additional ranking factor for the chosen key phrase.

• To meet the constraints of all search engines, keep the description length shorter than 165 characters. Although the search engines will see the entire description, searchers will only see the first 165 characters (including spaces).

• Your primary keyword should show up at the beginning of the description. As with primary keywords and titles, the closer to the beginning of the description your keyword is, the more relevance search engines will give the site for that term/phrase and related terms.

• Your key phrase should also be in the description. This gives more relevance to search engines for the key phrase, and shows visitors how relevant the page is to their search query.

Page / Article / Blog Body

The main purposes of the actual content (or body) of a page are to increase visitor loyalty, engage them and develop trust (read about The Psychology of Content). The secondary purpose is based on what you want to achieve with a page (sell a product, deliver information, get email addresses, etc.) The third purpose is to make the page and your site rank for the primary keyword, as well supporting key phrases.

• Choose three key phrases or less to target, per page.

• Content length should be no less than 300 words for web pages, 400 for blog posts and 500 for articles.

• Keyword density should be below 5%. If you find yourself having to force the keyword or phrase, consider the possibility that a) either you’re off topic or b) you’re trying to use the wrong word/phrase for the page.

• Where possible, bullet the important information. With online content, bullets show better performance than several paragraphs.

Linking Within Content

Links aren’t bad, but when the links are in content, relevance is extremely important. (Read more about relevance: We’ll Stop Screaming “Relevance” When You Start Listening )

• When linking to other pages on your site within the content, spread the links out. Don’t include more than 1 link per 150 words and make sure the links don’t all go to the same page.

• If you link to another website, don’t link to the home page. Always link to the most relevant page, which is generally an interior one.

• Never link using words like “click here” or “here”. Always use the title of the page you’re linking to, which should already include relevant keywords.

We call the points we covered above “rules”, as in the “rule of thumb”. These are tried, tested methods for better click-through rates and stronger content. Now, again, they’re just the basics for writing organic SEO content. If you’d like to really dig into the subject of writing optimized, readable content, we recommend Copywriting, Content Development & Strategies.

What is Information Architecture, or IA, and why is it important? Who does it? Who should?

If these questions have been buzzing around in your head, getting in the way of daily thought, this article is just the thing for you. On the other hand, if you’re only interested in creating a user-friendly, converting, professional, etc. site, read on, oh grasshopper.

The Science of Information

IA isn’t a typo that was supposed to be AI (as in, artificial intelligence). IA is an actual science. You can even go to college for it. I especially like the way Information Architecture for the World Wide Web describes it:

“The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information.”

An intranet is an enclosed system of information; to put it simply, it’s a private area, accessed only by specific people, such as employees using a corporation’s intranet. Now, bear with me, because I’m about to share a wild idea…

Imagine your website as an enclosed system of information. You have your business, and you want to build your website as a personal business hub. For example, let’s say you sell tools. You have tools for home repair, car repair, boat repair; you know your website is the perfect place for any DIY fanatic.

How are you going to lay out the information on your website? What are you going to do to keep visitors there? What are you going to do to bring them back?

This is where information architecture comes in, and it all starts with creating a blueprint – a diagram of how you’ll build the site to make it easy for visitors to:

a) Find necessary information
b) Navigate easily to other, related areas of the site
c) Read, ask questions, buy tools

Creating Your Site Structure

Now, information architecture is more than just usability, but usability is part of it. You need to figure out the best way to lay out your site to make it more usable for visitors, easier for search engines to crawl and in a way that makes sense.

How are you going to place your important areas? Here are three examples on how menus can be placed:

Once you figure out how you’re going to lay your pages out, you then have to figure out how you’re going to lay your menu out…

Top Navigation Nightmares

Will you have a “home” link to the home page? If your visitor is on a page, will the link to the page still work or will it become a “non-link”? Will you have a contact link or just a phone number? Before creating your top navigation structure, you’ll need to answer these questions.

Second Tier Navigation

Often called “dropdowns”, there’s always a question whether second tier navigation is a good or bad thing. If you can create a nice, clean top navigation without making dropdowns, more power to you. However, if you have way too much information to share, some form of secondary menu is necessary. After all, a main navigation with 30 links just wouldn’t be reasonable, would it?

So… how would you lay out your information? Look at the image below, created using the example of a tool shop. (get a bigger view: Information Schema / Content Layout)

While this information layout is pretty basic and not researched or extremely thought out, it should give you some ideas of how to structure your layout. The main categories (1^st left hand column) might be part of your main menu. The next column your second tier.

Anything after the second column, however, you may have several links. In this case, it may be best to create a secondary menu on the side, or a page for each menu section. Think hard about it. Try to develop a mockup of any way you can think of to lay this information out; it’s much easier to judge a visual representation than try to see it in your head.

Conclusion

The architecture of your site content shouldn’t be taken lightly. Not only can this help search engines provide more relevant results when you show up in the SERPs, but it can also make it much easier for users to understand and navigate the site. Remember, there’s no such thing as “intuitive navigation” – not really. However, the closer you can come to it, the more often your traffic will come back to gain information, look for products – and convert.

Disclaimer: Many of the links within this article go to other sites. These links should not be considered endorsements of a site or a site’s corresponding services, if any. The links are merely for you to gather additional information on the subject.

Buried in words

Search Engine Optimization… it sounds so darn fancy, doesn’t it? I mean, it sounds technical.

You know what? We like it that way. If everybody understood what we meant when we said “vertical search”, “GA” or “universal search”, well, we wouldn’t sound near as wise.

Clearing the Cloud

Now, we’re part of the “G.I. Joe” generation, where knowing was half the battle and the good guys always won.  Good guys: us. Battle: search engine ranking. Weapon: knowledge.. The more you know, the better off you are. With that in mind, allow us to arm you with a few weapons…

PageRank

Otherwise known as PR in Googleeze, PageRank is a nifty little algorithm. Learn it, understand it, and then forget about it. Does it matter? Sure – it’s one of the ways Google decides where it will rank your site for key terms. As well, a site with a high PR has more weight to it when it decides to link to yours.

However, few (if any) know exactly what it takes to move up the scale between 0 – 10 of PageRank. People may talk about a high number of links or other factors, but the truth is, they don’t really know. For Google, PR is one of 199 + other factors that determine key term rankings.

If you turn PageRank into something you obsess on, it can become a full time occupation. Since you don’t know what it’ll take to move from 2 to 3, etc, you could be obsessing for a long time. Don’t worry about; if you go up the ranks, simply accept it as a pat on the back and move on.

You can read an excellent in depth article about PageRank @ WebWorkshop: PageRank Explained

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SERPs

(S)earch (E)ngine (R)esults (P)age(s) – When you open up Google and put in a search term, the resulting pages are the SERPs. When SEO’s talk about raising in the rankings, they’re talking about the SERPs. What do you need to know about this term? That you want to be at the top of them for your chosen key term.

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Landing Pages

Okay, this here’s a deep subject to get into, because there are two types of landing pages. The first type is more aptly called a sales page. You click on an ad and land on a page completely dedicated to the purpose of the ad. It’s probably four scrolls long and has ample opportunity for you to buy, subscribe or sign up.

The second type is any page on your website. In the purest since of the word, a “landing” page is simply the page of a site you land on after clicking a link. However, when an SEO or copywriter says “landing page”, they generally mean the first type, or sales page.

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Conversions

If you’ve had any marketing experience, you already know what a conversion is. However, for SEO, it can get a bit tangled. Most people think a conversion means a sale. On the Internet, defining what you would consider a conversion all depends on what you want to get out of a particular page.

For example, if your visitor goes from a product page to checkout and completes the buying process, it’s a conversion. It’s also a conversion if you have an informational page or blog and someone signs up for your blog feed, though. Simply put, if the visitor does what you want them to do, they’ve converted.

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Keywords

Keywords and key terms are the word(s) you use to search for something on a search engine. For SEO and your business, they’re terms you think your target market will search for. Miami golf shoes, as one of our favorite examples. If you sell them, you might expect people to search for them. Therefore, you want to make sure your site shows up in the top SERPs for this key term.

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On Page Optimization

SEO is optimizing for the search engines: making sure your site is relevant to your chosen key terms. Several techniques go into this process. The techniques used specifically on the site itself, such as how the content is written, what terms are used, what the code looks like and how images are named are just a few examples of on page optimization.

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Off Page Optimization

Some SEO techniques include things that don’t directly affect your website. Link building is an excellent example. With link building, the optimizer gets other sites to link to yours. It doesn’t actively change anything about your website except (if done right) the SERP rankings.

Plenty of terms exist in the SEO world, and more are constantly being added. As well, you might have someone using a term you don’t recognize only to find it means something you’re extremely familiar with. When you’re talking with an optimizer or someone in a related industry, don’t be afraid to ask for an explanation of terms you don’t understand. Knowing is half the battle!

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(Editors Note: Added Jan 2011)

Jaamit Link

This is a new term; we don’t know if it will stick, but we hope it does. We’ve added “jaamit”, created as a memorial to a wonderful person in the industry.  A jaamit is a very strong link, one that even outlasts the link builder. Read the link to the article for more information, a touching story and a hard lesson about link building. RIP Jaamit Durrani

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301 Redirect

Used mostly when old pages are replaced by new ones, the 301 redirect is a “permanent” move. Think of it like the post office. When you move from one address to another, you give them your new address. Why? So they automatically send the mail to your new address.

A 301 works much like the post office, only for traffic. If you delete/move/rename a web page without using a 301, you’ll lose all the links, PageRank, traffic and other good stuff you’ve built for that page. By adding a 301 redirect, all that good stuff is “redirected” to the new page. Only, unlike the post office, the traffic doesn’t get lost in transit.

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404 Error

You’re surfing the web and you come across a page that says, “Oops! The page you’re trying to reach isn’t here” or something like that? This is the irritatingly familiar 404 error page. Ironically, a lot of 404’s happen because people didn’t use a 301 redirect. 404 simply means “page not found”.

Hint: you don’t want a lot of these. You can always find a list in Google Webmaster Tools. You can either create a custom 404 page that helps your visitors find related information or create 301s and send them to the new pages.

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Backlink

A backlink is also called an inbound link or an IB link. When another site links to yours, it’s called a backlink. Their site page >>> your site page.

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Spiders

A lot of terms go along with “spiders”. For example, search engine spiders are said to “crawl” the web.  Spiders are also known as “web robots”, “robots”, “web crawlers”, Internet bots” or just “bots”. Spiders are simply programs made to search the web; in the case of search engine spiders, they do so for indexing purposes.

Not all bots are “good”. Some are used for spamming purposes. Called “spambots”, they gather email addresses, hunt through forums for places to submit poor content, etc. Some spambots simply post messages with a lot of links, meant to increase a site’s search engine ranking.

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Static Websites

A “traditional” website is usually a “static” website, and has a URL that ends with HTML. Static websites usually have a set amount of pages with a finite amount of information. Content changes are done by professionals, with the new page uploaded to the server.

Each page of a static site has all the information on it that it needs to be displayed in your browser. What your browser sees in the code on that single page is what you get.

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Dynamic Websites

Dynamic websites usually end with extensions like PHP, ASP and JSP. Dynamic sites allow the content to change as a user refreshes the page. Examples of dynamic websites are those that might show revolving banners, changing testimonials, etc. Other examples include sites built on WordPress, Joomla and Drupal platforms, or many eCommerce sites with rotating products.

Unlike static sites, dynamic sites separate the design from the content. In this way, even individuals with no design experience can change the content without messing up the design. You add a new product, for example, and it simply shows up as a separate page, exactly where it’s supposed to.

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Organic Search Results

In the SERPs, you have paid advertisements and organic results. Site optimization targets organic search results, which are shown directly under the paid advertisements. You want to rank high in organic – or natural – search results for your targeted keywords; studies show a much higher percentage of clicks for sites in the #1 placement.

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URL

AKA Uniform Resource Locator, a URL is an Internet address. Examples: http://mycompany.com, http://www.yourcompany.com/blog/blog-title, http://mywebsite.net/introduction.html

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What SEO terms would you add to the list? If you have suggestions, let us know in the comments!

Get ahead of the pack

Why? Can’t you just, you know, put up a website and get automatic clicks to your website? Well, if you’ve been a website owner for more than a few months, you already know the answer to this. Without a strong placement in the search engines, you’re always going to be scraping the bottom of the online business barrel.

The Phone Book of the Now

Before the Internet, you had the Yellow Pages. If you wanted to get your phone ringing off the hook, you had to advertise; where better, than the place most people look to find services. The Internet far outshines the Yellow Pages now, however. This is the place to find services, products, homes, cars and anything else a consumer might want and/or need.

There’s a difference between the two, however. With the Yellow Pages, you had to buy the big ads to really be noticed amongst hundreds of listings; there just wasn’t much to distinguish your company from others in a long list of company names and addresses.

Today’s phone book – the Internet – is a totally different story…

Today's Phone Book

Changing Search Engine Results

The search engines are constantly changing – tweaking their results to give a “better user experience”. Now, whether you like the new experiences as a user or not, you have to love them as a business owner for the opportunities they present, especially if you have high search engine placement for your key terms.

Beautiful SERP's

Ah, beautiful, beautiful SERPS. You get the chance to have an attention grabbing title (SEO My Site). Your potential visitors can star the page to come back to (white star, turns yellow when you favorite it) and see what your page looks like before they click (magnifying glass). You’re then allowed a nice little description of what they’ll find on the page. So, what you’re now looking at is a full page, full color phone book advertisement. How much does it cost to be there? It’s free.

How much does it cost to be one of the first ones? That’s a whole other question.

Yes, You Can SEO!

If you’re a small business owner, you’ll probably look at the prices for SEO and think, “My goodness, they want an arm and a leg!” Some companies charge according the competition for your search phrase, so if it’s a high competition phrase, it will probably cost some money.

Believe it or not, however, you can save a little bit of the cost with a few of Google’s tools and a little bit of time:

Google Webmaster Tools

Not only can this helpful little tool show you potential problems with your site, it can also help you see where your traffic comes from, the terms Google sees as most relevant on your site, as well as a few other goodies. Recent updates from this year have added other things, like seeing how many impressions your site gets on Google for search phrases. Very useful tool for improving your site.

Google Trends, Google Insight, Google Keyword Tool

Together, these three offerings from the big daddy search engine can seriously help you beef up your key terms. For instance, say you have a keyword you’re sure will bring in traffic, but you don’t know how much traffic. Pull up the Google Keyword Tool and search for your term. You’ll get an average monthly search amount.

You’ll also get a list of other, (mostly) relevant key terms to think about. Check with Google Insights and you can see if the term is searched in your target area. Pull up Google Trends, choose your area, and you can see whether your chosen term is trending up, trending down, or showing a steady search number.

Google Analytics

If you don’t have an analytics program, you definitely want one. Google Analytics is a free program that can help you find out how your site is performing per page, per keyword, per area. This analytics program can help you find out what’s missing in your website. For example, if you’re getting great traffic but no conversions, it’s highly likely your site itself is the problem. If you’re ranking high for several key terms but not getting traffic, it’s probably your Meta data (title, description) – maybe you optimized for search engines but forgot about potential visitors.

Why the Google Focus?

Well, in case you missed it, Google is the big search engine. Yeah, Bing has its little corner of the market, as well as a few other SEs, but if comScore is even close to right, Google still has a healthy 66.1% of the U.S. market. Globally, NetMarketShare reports an 85.78% market share for the big G. With that kind of monopoly, you can’t help but stop wondering why people are worried about Google search engine placement, vs. other search engine placements.

*comScore: U.S. Search Engine Rankings – October 2010

*NetMarketShare: Search Engine Market Share

With all of this out there, with all the handouts Google is offering and the info contained here, you can get better search engine placement. Keep in mind SEO is as much theory as it is smart decisions and known techniques. Learn what to look for and how to affect your strategy. By using these tools, you have a whole golden cache of goodies – you’re a powerhouse, with just enough information to be dangerous.

Have we forgotten any helpful Google tools for SEO?

Shocking...but, true

Shock, gasp and amaze… but many people seem to think “search engine optimization” is just another word for the I.T. department. Surprisingly enough, it’s not. It’s another way to say, “Get your website on the front page of the search engines”, which sounds nothing like “I.T. department”.

When your website breaks, you call a coder. When you need a graphic design, you call a designer. When you need a fancy new program, you call a programmer. When you need site traffic… well, wouldn’t you know it, you call for SEO.

Who are we?

We’re the wonders of the Internet-verse, spreading high-ranking cheer to our clients. Yes, we might do some coding, but it’s all in the interest of SEO. We love the challenge of finding your golden keywords. We like to dig into research and data… it’s like reading the stars for astrologists. We breathe this stuff.

SEO Around the World

Now, SEO is fairly well known worldwide, sort of. At least, the term is. Its meaning seems to be flexible, however. Depending on whom you ask and where you are when you do the asking, dealing with SEO means the optimizer can:

• Design a website
• Write good content
• Fix broken code
• Code a website
• Use an analytics program
• Create videos
• Use every computer program known to man
• Understand any type of the thousands of coding languages

I’d go on, but it’d be an endless list just ask our project manager.

What really needs to be clarified is that it all depends on the optimizer. Yes, ladies and gents… if you have a single optimizer (rather than a company), you’re limited to what that optimizer knows how to do. If you use an SEO company, you’re limited to what that company’s employees can do. This is a truth no matter what country you live in.

For instance…I have an optimizer. That’s not her main job. However, can she fix a broken website, update code, write great content, knows the abc’s of SEO etc. – as long as it’s written in one of the languages she’s familiar with. Whereas, my love has always been business development, content strategies and creating marketing campaigns for clients. That’s what I love to do period.

Can I understand analytics when I see them? In general, yes – and I’m learning more every day. However, when I want verification that I understand what the data is saying, I go to someone who specializes in analytics. That’s what they DO. It’s what they breathe. Me, I’m just a little ‘ole marketing who knows some other stuff.

Hiring an Optimizer Doesn’t Mean You Hired a Website Wizard

For the most part, even on page optimization doesn’t take knowing a whole bunch of code. And, for the most part, the places you need to change in the code are really easy to find once you know what to look for. However, if you expect your optimizer (or optimization company) to provide coding services, you’d better check if they can before you hire them.

If you’re afraid your eCommerce website might not be as secure as it needs to be, go ahead – ask your SEO if they have any recommendations. Often, what you’ll most likely get is a recommendation to check with an Internet security company.

One of the reasons, I feel, that SEO gets such a bad rap is because people who aren’t in the business really don’t understand what the business entails. For that matter, some people in the business don’t understand what it entails. You might hire an optimizer, so glad that you finally have yourself a website wizard; only to find out that what you really have is… well, a really good optimizer.

Before you hire someone to do your website optimization, think about what you’re really expecting. If you’d like to combine your needs (say, design and optimization) check with the person or company first. Ask if they can provide the services you need.

SEO and I.T. aren’t the same things, and trying to convince an optimizer that they should also be able to do x, y, z is a useless endeavor. It’s like comparing apples and pears, then trying to tell a fruit vendor why a pear should taste like an apple. Instead, describe what you want to achieve. Let them tell you whether they can achieve it…Simple right?

Semantics:  the study of language meaning

Analysis: an investigation of the component parts of a whole and their relations in making up the whole

David Harry over at the SEO Training Dojo wrote an excellent article entitled Semantic Analysis for SEO: Going Beyond LDA. For you search geeks that understand… well, search geek, just click the link, head on over and have yourselves a good read. For our readers who aren’t search geeks, have no idea what LDA is, and are now throwing their hands up in the air saying, “oh crap, now what”, stick around.

I bring up David’s article because he makes a very valid, very interesting point about keyword vs. word usage. These tidbits of information can be of huge value to you, who may be reading SEO blogs to learn how to create your own campaign (or, at the very least, to understand what your SEO company representative is saying when they tell you how the campaign is going). It’s just one more piece of the puzzle you can use to gain the whole picture.

Adding Meaning to Key Terms

There’s this thing; It’s called semantic analysis (SA). As David mentions in the article, SA isn’t necessarily about synonyms and plurals – and here’s where this article really begins…

In content, you have synonyms, plurals and related terms. When you read a sentence, you get the meaning of a word based on the context. You get the meaning of the sentence based on the surrounding sentences. In fact, a lot of our reading comprehension doesn’t come because we’re walking dictionaries, but because we use surrounding information to support our understanding of the written word.

Take, for instance, the word pilferer. Do you know off the top of your head what it means? Some of us may see the word, not recognize it and go find a dictionary. Others “guess”, using the surrounding text…

“He’s a compulsive pilferer. Everywhere he goes, stuff disappears into his pockets. Last week, he walked out of the store with a pack of gum without paying for it. He doesn’t even like gum!”

Okay, so maybe you wouldn’t use the word in a normal conversation, but using the surrounding text, you’ve probably guessed a pilferer is a thief. How do you know? The surrounding text:

…stuff disappears into his pockets… walked out of a store… without paying for it

Yet, none of these words are synonymous with thief.

Like Human, Like Search Engine

Search engines work much the same way. They using surrounding text to “understand” how relevant a page is to the search term. Apple is a good example. With just the word without surrounding context, you could mean:

• The fruit
• The company
• A color
• A desert

The SEs decide what you mean by surrounding text:

• The fruit – Granny Smith, Jonathan, Autumn Gold
• The company – iPhone, iTunes, MacBook
• Color – Candy Apple Red, paint, color
• Desert – Candied apple, cake, cobbler

Without these surrounding words, all you get on (at least) the first two pages is information about Apple – the company.

What does this mean to you?

When you write an article, blog or web page, reread with an eye on semantic value. Consider what you’ve written about when linking. The worst thing you can do for your site and your visitors is write a whole bunch of words and then throw a keyword or two in there. Frankly, it just makes for crap.

It’s all about relevance, but relevance doesn’t necessarily mean just similar words or even words that mean the same thing (i.e. SEO and search engine optimization). Create a list of words you might use to support your key terms like using:

• exercise to support Pilates
• PPC to support conversions
• cat to support jaguar (David’s example)
• Granny Smith to support apple

If you take the time to make sure your SEO efforts – whether it’s writing Meta data or building links – include supporting words, you’ll end up building a rare thing: a tightly focused website with excellent links, strong ranking and content your readers (and the SEs) can understand.

So, right now, I challenge you to look at your site, your articles, your blogs, your links, what have you, keeping semantics in mind. Do your keywords get the support they need?

Keywords in your domain

Funny I was having this conversation on Twitter just the other day. Granted not much of a conversation with 140 characters but I decided to take it a bit further and write a blog post.

You’re setting up your website. You already know you’re going to pay a professional SEO specialist to perform the complete kit-n-SEO-kaboodle, you just haven’t hired anybody yet. Now, you’re pretty sure you read something about domains being important for the process, but how important is it?

… and what’s a domain?

As you may or may not know, a domain is your Internet address. It’s the “http://www.mysite.com” you type in to reach your site. It’s also an important part of your SEO strategy to consider if you haven’t bought a domain yet.

If you already know you’re going to hire someone to do your SEO, don’t wait until after you have your domain. Many of the strongest SEO strategies have been created before the website was even built. In fact, it’s often easier to create a highly optimized site from scratch than it is to come in after the site is created… and it all comes down (for the most part) to keywords.

If a potential visitor is looking for widget makers for example, and your domain is “widgetmaker.com”, you get double power from your domain. One, the search engine will consider your site to have a higher amount of relevance in the search (thus, ranking your site higher). Second, the potential visitor will believe they’ve found just what they’re looking for.

Search engines are always looking for relevance in their algorithms; finding relevant keywords in the domain name scores very high. They give a lot of weight to keyword rich domain name.

If you’re iffy about this, do a search for anything. Instead of looking at the information for each listing, look at the domain name…

• #1 listing for “SEO company” – www.seocompany.com
• #2 listing – www.seocompany.net

• #1 listing for “golf shoes” – www.golfshoesplus.com

• #1 listing for “internet marketing” (after Wikipedia, that is) – www.freeinternetmarketingcourses.com

WWW or Non-WWW?

People are starting to drop the “www” from their speech; when people remember a site name, they seldom add the www to it. Whichever you choose is fine, but remember search engines will index both versions. This can cause issues. Once you decide make sure you set which one you’re using in your .htaccess file.

For non-www to www

For www to non-www

The problem now is that people are realizing that having keywords in a domain helps with organic SEO. There’s a good chance all the good domains have disappeared. For example, “business.com” was the highest valued domain ever, and will never be available again. You have to be original.

.com, .net, .org?

Another discussion ensued on Twitter about the .com, .net, .org  here is what you should keep in mind. Several domain types are available – so many that it can be overwhelming. Which type of domain is best? First, consider the user. Most people simply assume a domain name will end with “.com”, so it’s easy to remember. If you can’t grab a good .com domain name, move to the next best thing, which is “.org”. The third is “.net”.

However, don’t give up a good domain name just because the “.com” isn’t available. For instance, if you want “widgetmakers” and the .com or .org aren’t available but the .net version is, go for the .net. As with anything, the potential visitor is the ultimate target, not the search engines; never give up user experience for search engine ranking.

Find a good keyword-relative domain name for your new web site, but try not to make it too long. Make it catchy, memorable and as short as can be. So next time you are in a position to help a client or a friend choose a domain name what are you going to do?

Tons of sites – really, lots of sites – claim to be able to give you the Secrets of SEO (add a whole bunch of exclamation points here). Just download this eBook (giving away your name and email), buy this special report (giving away name, email and cash) or order this course (same, same), and you, too, can know what the experts know.

The secrets… those almighty tips, tricks and techniques to get YOUR site ranking above all the rest NO MATTER how much competition you have. Here’s the number one SEO secret:

This stuff is crap. It’s so much crap it stinks higher than a garbage dump. Even flies are scared.

The Truth

Every SEO who can call themselves one and be truthful (key word here) about it has a few things they cling to, and these things aren’t always the same… but secrets? Come on, people. This is the Information Age.

I mean, “secret” implies something most people don’t know. Secrets are kept under wraps, right? So how is it that all of a sudden all these people seem to have a slew of SEO secrets to share with you? How many secrets can there really be? Yet, you see:

• SEO Secrets – top Secrets a SEO company will not want you to know
• SEO Secrets – all you need to know to reach the top of the search engines
• SEO Secrets Revealed!

Notice a trend yet?

Look… I don’t want to just break this barrier down. No. I want to stomp on it, crush it until it’s so much goo under my boot heel. There’s nothing in these eBooks, reports and courses you can’t already find – free, I might add – on the Internet.

In fact, some of this SEO secret crap you pay for will give you opposing views, if not be completely full of disinformation. Mostly, what these people have done is gather public domain information (online, free use), stuff it into an eBook or report, and slap a price sticker on it.

A side note on SEO courses and certifications…

You can spend the money on an SEO course and you might learn a few things, but, for heaven’s sakes, don’t pay the money just to be certified. As of yet, there’s still no governing body for search engine optimization. As of yet, there’s no such thing as real certification. Claiming you have an SEO certification on a job interview will most likely get your resume dropped into the trash pile. No joke.

You can’t go to college for SEO. You can go to college for things useful to SEO, such as Information Retrieval, Data Structures and Algorithms, and Natural Language Processing. However, you can’t go to an accredited college and get a Bachelor’s degree in SEO. Ain’t happenin’.

Where to Go for REAL SEO Secrets

When you want to learn about SEO, don’t waste your money. If you’re going to throw cash, pay attention to where you’re throwing it. Here’s a list of places to go if you want to learn search engine optimization:

• SEO Chat – Articles, forum, tons of great info
  • free

• SEO Training Dojo – Articles, forums, tons of great info in the Study Hall, 30% some of the best tools in the business, SEO community, weekly study sessions, case studies, in depth search geek info and more
  • $30 a month membership ($250 for a year, $50 savings bonanza and $1k+ in bonuses)
  • Disclaimer – we’re members so we’re partial, but the information you gain is well worth the money you spend!

• SEOMoz – Articles, SEOMoz toolset, Webinars, SEO community, marketing information
  • $99 per month, plus SEO tools

Free Article Resources

• Search News Central
• Search Engine People
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Land

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So, the next time you see a site offering the “Secrets of SEO”, pause before you click. Get your skepticism in order before you look at the page. If they say, “for only $20.99” or “guaranteed to get you to the #1 spot” or anything like that, click away. It’s crap.

Better yet, look no more. Come back here, go to the sites above, read and follow links to find other resources. Build your own set of resources for real SEO information. Recognize the crap for what it is.

We’ve all been there. You have this sweet SEO campaign planned out to the nth degree. You’ve put it into motion. You’re sure it’s going to:

• Increase your traffic
• Boost your ranking
• Boost your ROI (Return on Investment)

Problem: After three months, your ROI is still a sinking ship. Your ranking seems to have a severe lack of motivation; it hasn’t even tried to move. Worse yet, your visitors have the attention spans of guppies, staying only long enough for the site to load – if you have visitors at all.

Let me repeat myself “one more time again”. We’ve all been there. Yes, even the SEO professionals get it wrong… occasionally.

See, SEO has this undefined human element. Yes, computer programs can do some of the grunt work for you, but eventually you cross a line where you have to actively make a decision. At some point, you have to decide whether you’re going to choose keyword A or keyword B, and then jump down the rabbit hole. Eventually, you, the human, have to act.

I believe the largest difference between the SEO professionals and the layperson is how you act. When it comes down to the wire and you see the SEO campaign you spent so much time on isn’t working, what do you do?

• The Layperson: In my experience, I’ve noticed that most laypeople tend to have a “shove all” approach. If the SEO campaign isn’t working, shove all you can at the site and see if it helps. Either that or they toss the campaign and start over. Sort of like tossing out the baby with the bath water (I’m full of clichés today).

• The SEO Professional: The professionals seem to take a sort of laid-back approach. First, there’s an unsurprised, yet thoughtful, “huh…” We immediately know we missed something somewhere along the way. Rather than toss out the campaign and start over, we turn into perfectionist naggers, nitpicking at every detail of the SEO campaign. Our job now is to find out what part of the campaign isn’t working as expected.

How do we do that? With the Three T’s of Optimization, of course. We track, tweak and test the campaign. Notice that I started with “track”. You, on the other hand, need to start with a part of any SEO campaign commonly missed by the layperson: the benchmarks.

You have to start with where you are and add where you’re going:

“My site is currently ranking 47 on Google for Keyword A. I want to see position 1 -4 for Keyword A within six months. To do this I will…”

Decide what methods you’re going to use to reach your goals. Then, write down the metrics that will be affected by those methods. For instance, if you’re going to use link building as one of your methods, you need to know how many, and what kind of, sites are linking to yours – before you start your campaign.

So – benchmarks. Don’t forget them.

As your campaign goes on, track the changes in those benchmarks on a regular basis. If your analytics program shows you a new site referring traffic to yours, you want to make a notation. If your search engine traffic goes up, you want to make a notation. If you post an article, write a blog, change a meta tag… you want to make a notation.

When things change, in other words, it’s a sign that your pen needs to visit the notepad. Mark it. Write it down. Highlight it. If things go wrong you’ll then have a recorded history of changes, making it that much easier to figure out where it went wrong. If you know the “where”, it’ll be easier to figure out “what” and “why”.

Comparing After the Fact

Maybe you didn’t think about the benchmarks. With most web analytic programs, you’re given the ability to compare the past with the present. For example, you can compare the month before you started your SEO campaign with the current month.

In this way, you can find out if your keyword reach (how many keywords, relevance of keywords, traffic coming in from them) has changed. You might find that targeted Keyword A is bringing less traffic than before, while you now have two more untargeted keywords bringing a few visits each.

While it’s not as comprehensive as a benchmark report, it’ll do in a pinch. Any kind of comparison can give you enough information to go on.

A final note: don’t assume you know what’s wrong based on information from one metric. Before you change anything, look at the whole picture. Some things, such as search engine changes like Google Instant, are beyond your control. A serious change in algorithms can derail a whole campaign – or it can mean a longer time span before your SEO campaign takes affect.

Often, it takes a month or two to see any real changes due to your SEO campaign implementation. However, if you’re moving into the fourth month with a case of “nothing’s happening” blues, you need to make some changes – but what changes need to be made?

The Benchmark

Before you started your campaign, you should have created a benchmark cheat sheet. The benchmark is the set of metrics you’re using to define your goals. It answers, “Where am I now”, so you can find out “Where am I going” later on.

For example, if you’re trying to increase your traffic, your cheat sheet should have all the relevant metrics on it, such as:

• Targeted, relevant keywords you’re currently ranking for
• How many inbound links you currently have
• How much traffic your site is averaging per month
• Your daily traffic count (unique and return visitors)
• How much direct, search engine and referral traffic your site is averaging per month

Don’t forget the benchmark; you’ll regret it later if you do. Because, if you don’t put down where you’re at before you start the campaign, all you’ll know if it goes wrong is.. well, that it went wrong. You’ll play hell trying to figure out where.

Comparisons and Changes

If you have your benchmark metrics and set goals (say, you want to rank on the front page of Google for Keyword A within six months), it becomes easier to find out what the problem is.

Comparing benchmarks with current analytics…

You can’t really see what’s happening with a site without a comparison to previous months. All you’ll see is an overview: your overall traffic is rising or dropping, you’re getting hits from more keywords, etc. By comparing your benchmark data with your current analytics, you’ll get a much better picture of your site dynamics.

For example, if your search engine traffic drops instead of rises, you need to look at the data for the keywords and meta information changed by your SEO campaign. Compare these changes to your current analytics. It may very well be that your SEO campaign is working well, but you’ve targeted a keyword with little to no search value – i.e. people aren’t looking for it.

So, while your site is now ranking in the top ten position for Keyword A, you’ve lost search engine traffic for Keyword F. Before your campaign, Keyword F may have brought you more traffic because it was searched more often – even if you never intentionally targeted Keyword F in the first place.

You might be tempted to quickly change the keyword focus…

Before you do, however, make sure you really want to. Look at the relevance of Keyword A vs. Keyword F. For example, we seem to be ranking really well for “dead end sign”, because of an image we used for the Article Archive. The chance of anyone hiring us who searched for “dead end sign”, however, is slim to none.

In this case, if A is more relevant than F, you may be getting less traffic, but you’re getting more targeted traffic. Thus, you have a higher possibility of gaining traffic interested in what you’re selling.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Internet really is like a net. Everything attached to your site can affect how your site ranks, your traffic, your ROI, etc.

A real world example…

We recently had a client who wanted to rank better for some high competition keywords. We started tracking their site and created a set of benchmarks. Right before we actually started the campaign, however, their traffic took a deep dive. Why?

In looking at the analytics, we found they’d lost a large amount of referring traffic. Google put up their faster indexing, cleaning out the closets. So… picture a net like a spider’s web. The outer ring is sending links to the next ring in, which sends links to the next ring in and so on, until finally you have the set of sites linking to yours.

Some of the sites on the outer ring no longer exist, although the link count does. As the index cleans those dead links out, the next ring in begins to suffer. Some of those sites fall off the map and the next ring begins to suffer. By the time the waves got to our client’s site, the damage was serious. It took a bit of work and time to even out the mess.

The moral: A single site linking to yours and sending a large percentage of traffic your way could disappear overnight; the competition is fierce. What you’ll initially see in the analytics, however, is that your traffic has seriously dropped. It’s up to you to dig down into the data and find out you lost an important link – and then replace that link with something else.

In short, nobody said SEO was easy – and if they did, they’re lying. It’s a down and dirty, thankless job full of pouring over data, building campaigns, tweaking campaigns and pouring over more data. However, if you take the time to learn the basics of analytics and creating/tweaking/testing SEO campaigns instead of rushing in to plug a hole, you’re a lot less likely to have a sinking ship.

Seldom do we talk about other search engines at the Article Archive, because Google is the Big Daddy of them all. However, Bing made a huge announcement a few days ago that makes many people look at Google’s Instant like yesterday’s old news.

Google and Twitter

Over the past, oh… year, maybe, Google has really started pulling Twitter into the limelight. Those who didn’t know Twitter was a place to go for business do now, especially with the rollout of Google’s RealTime Search feature.

For those that haven’t been paying attention, GRT allows people to search topics on social feeds. Generally, these feeds are from Twitter or Friendfeed with the occasionally aside from other accounts. Social media aficionados just shrugged and said, “Told you so”, while businesses that didn’t use Twitter scrambled to grab a branded account.

Since many other business individuals already knew the benefit of Twitter for business, some of those people also parked branded accounts for the competition. So, for example (and completely hypothetical), this is like @lowes registering @homedepot, @home_depot and any other variation, and holding on to it. So much for social media and branding.

Bing and Facebook

Now it’s happening again for those businesses without a Facebook account. You may just be left holding an empty bag on Christmas. October 13, 2010, Bing announced that Facebook will officially be a part of their search results. You can read more about the specific changes at Website Magazine.

This is huge, people:

• Facebook has over 100 million mobile users alone.
• Worldwide, the megaton social media platform has over 500 million active users.
• Over 700 billion minutes are spent per month on Facebook.

Now, Facebook won’t appear in the results unless you search using “Liked Results”, so some people may shrug and say, “So what?” However, if you consider a “like” as a positive result and you consider how much 100 positive votes might affect your choice of search result, you might begin to see the business potential here.

Facebook Is Dying… Isn’t It?

A slew of articles and news bits have come out over the past year, discussing how the higher-ups of the company have no business ethics. Many have shared outrage with Facebook’s seeming break with their own privacy statements. A few security leaks here, a few security leaks there, and people slowly get the idea that maybe good ‘ole FB ain’t quite the place it used to be.

One of the newest articles, Social Media Privacy Leaks Creates More Detractors Than Promoters for Facebook by Ron Callari, nicely covers how (and why) the social media giant may end up biting the bullet. Namely, all the problems of late have brought up the serious question of trust. This lack of trust, Ron calculates, may be pushing many of the 500 + million users into a passive or detracting attitude. So, good thoughts and feelings are going down the drain for Facebook.

However, let me also quote one of the last things Ron states in his article. “Presently Facebook is the only game in town. Other contenders like MySpace have fallen off the radar, and young upstarts like Diaspora haven’t really taken hold just yet.”

So, while you’re waiting for over 500 million people to quit using Facebook, think about how long that might take – 3 years? 5? 10? Then ask yourself, are you willing to wait that long before you do something that can potentially boost your business to unprecedented levels? I think not.

If you’ve been hemming and hawing over whether to use Facebook as a platform for your business, stop. Yes, it works. Yes, it can help your business grow. And with the Facebook/Bing integration, if you don’t use FB, you could be missing out on one of the few things that would put you ahead of the competition.

Holiday Competition

The holidays are upon us; fall is here. As an eCommerce business, whether you’re selling services, products or information, you should already have a holiday plan in mind. What works the best? If you don’t already have a plan, what are some things you can do to take advantage of the holiday rush?

Out of curiosity, we asked some of the big hitters in PPC and SEO to share their holiday tips. Here are some fantastic ones we’d like to share with you:

Ruud Hein suggests a slightly different approach. “Start early. Start earlier. In general, live six months into the future with your content. Early Christmas searches (trips, food, things to buy, etc.) start in summer. Not only that, but six months of aging is better than six weeks. So, fall is here; it’s time to work on your spring campaigns.”

• Prepare now
• Make sure you have strong marketing lingo
• Offer something special for ordering
• Reduce prices if needed
• Begin social networking
• Keep your blog updated
• Spruce up your ads and site design

Bonnie Burns says, “Just like brick and mortar stores change their window and sign to attract crowds, you need to do that to your site and online visibility. You’d better also be using good SEO processes, though, because competition online will be massive.”

• Offer pro bono advice to a lucky reader
• Plan for a great sale season in organic results
• Have a PPC plan in place to unload stock if necessary
• Have sale items to drive traffic from Thanksgiving to December
• Have a link plan to set up targeted items for deep linking

Deep linking is targeting pages deeper in your site that might not otherwise get traffic. Terry Van Horne pointed toward press releases and other deep linking strategies “which I would be working like mad on this time of year… When I was doing CMS and shopping cart development, I pretty much figured I was done on US Thanksgiving. For eCommerce, you’re busy building your link equity into the money page.”

• Assess last year’s campaign
• Update and fine-tune next year’s business plan
• Know what the target audience is focus on for the holidays and create your campaigns around it

“I’m insanely busy because businesses are gearing up their holiday campaigns,” Angie Nikoleychuk of Angie’s Copywriting says. “Many people are getting shorter tempered, less patient and in a hurry. But for each business, the holidays are going to be different.”

• Send out greeting cards to those clients and/or customers you have email or address information for
• Decorate for the holidays
• Try to tailor your ads to seasonal themes when you can
• Have a holiday giveaway
• Schedule weekly drawings for gifts a month or so before the holiday
• Track everything you do with Analytics and Adwords
• Create one landing page per add, test the pages and don’t forget the call to action

Angie was kind enough to give us an update with wonderful extra’s with her Online Business Holiday Checklist

Our favorite analyst, Massimo Paolini, says, “Increase your involvement with Web Analytics during the busy season, even if the temptation is the exact opposite. The web is great, because it allows you to fall faster than any other medium and therefore adjust faster as well.”

• Focus your site on what’s converting
• Split test something measurable and meaningful to your bottom line

Along with his contributed tips, Andy Beard adds, “Go for the quick wins… If you’re not scared silly of relying on Google, think about expanding to use remarketing.”

1. Set up analytics so you have all the data you need – custom profiles for segmentation of data and actually taking action on all those cool analytics tutorials you have read.
2. Focus your site on what is converting – navi…gation, index/noindex etc
3. Split test something measurable and meaningful to your bottom line
4. If you are not scared silly of relying on Google, think about expanding to using remarketing.

I found it interesting that the most common thing these experts pointed to was “giving”. It seems, during the holiday season at least, consumers expect even businesses to get into the spirit of giving. The next question is, if you don’t have a giveaway, special “buy one, get one free” offer or something like this, are you the Grinch that stole Christmas?

Thanks to all the experts who pitched in on the conversation. These are great SEO and PPC tips to start (or tweak) an online marketing campaign. Join the conversation on our Facebook Fan page for more great tips!

On Page SEO

Um. No. You see… well, let’s start from the beginning.

On page SEO is that stuff you do to your website. It’s the meta tags, the image alt tags, the content headers. It’s the careful thought put into content, keyword placement, how you write your anchor links and what words you use. On page SEO is necessary for several things, including SERP ranking and visitors seeing your page as relevant to their search (see, it’s not all about the SEs).

Off page SEO is all that stuff you do that doesn’t include actually touching your website. There are a million and one ways to perform off page SEO, but it all comes down to a term you may be more familiar with: link building.

You need link building. Why? Because the SEs look at a website with few links and shrug their shoulders (metaphorically speaking, of course). This is especially true if the site has been around for a couple of years. Logically speaking, a relevant, useful site should have at least a few hundred links by that time.

Links point to your site and say, “yo, SEs, this site says it talks about a, b, c, and we agree.” The search engines take those links, add them up and decide how relevant your site is to a given search term. You need these links, so no, you can’t blow them off.

Now, here’s a hint: you need quality links. We’ve talked about quality links before, but let’s be a little more in depth, shall we? Especially since I love coming up with examples. Let’s use our favorite example of Miami shoes of the golfing variety:

You own a website that sells shoes. It’s based in Miami, but you’re trying to expand your business to a national (or at least state) level. As well, golf shoes are your most expensive type of product, and you want it known that you sell high quality golf shoes that last. While you can go out and try to push 15,000 links through directories for a ranking hike, you can always try it an easier way.

Now, you know and I know there are tons of golf resorts advertising online, as well as tourist sites, review sites, sites that talk about golf, city guides and so on. Links from these sites would be closely related to your content: this is a big plus. On top of that, however, many of these sites are probably popular, and can bring extra value to the links.

With relevance in mind, you could also try:

• Photo sharing: sharing your product pictures and make them public using places like Photo Bucket or Flickr
• Use social bookmarking to promote your website, but be careful to choose proper tags
• Submit articles about how to make golf shoes comfortable or which ones are all the rage now
• Submit your products to various social shopping networks, such as Kaboodale or Google Product Search
• Get into document sharing with Google Docs and other sharing websites. You can share product brochures and other information, thus branding you further

Of course, there are always directory submissions, social networks and blogging, among other avenues.

Whatever you do to increase your off page SEO factors, take the time to make sure your linking campaign is well thought out. It’s a campaign, not a forced search and seizure of the Internet landscape.

Understanding Competition reports

You might pay an SEO company to give you a competition report or you might have a program that runs one for you. That’s all well and good, but what if you get back a bunch of numbers and columns you don’t understand? Even if you do understand them, how do they translate to your strategy and campaign?

This article is a quick review to help you along your way. Of course, we can’t answer them for your keywords, but the principal remains.

The project is XYZ Private Investigators. We want our clients to rank for as many high search, high quality, and relevant key terms as possible. First, we look at how many searches a term gets, and then we check the competition out.

Although KEI is a number, we seldom use the KEIs provided by any program used, because the formula is skewed. For instance, keyword A may have 5 million results pages with the term in the page somewhere, while only 13,000 have the term in the title and description. The KEI doesn’t take into account the difference.

In the image below is a list of key terms relevant to the client’s site and service, ranked by the number of titles with the keyword. For the purpose of this exercise, we’re using WebCEO. It’s not exact, but it does in a pinch.

Key terms

The first thing you’ll notice is a bunch of numbers. What we’re looking for is the optimal formula of high searches with medium to low competition. For optimum targeting, we need less PR and links as well.

Understanding the Columns

Note: WebCEO almost never matches the data you’ll get from Google AdWords, which is why I like to compare the two. We’re going to just use WebCEO data here, but don’t forget to cross check with other platforms when running an analysis for an actual campaign.

Let’s look at the columns. The first and second column have to do with how much people actually search for a term. The second column gives a visual representation of how competitive the term is.

Pages

“Pages” can mean that the term is anywhere on the page. It could be in images, the content, headline… it could be an afterthought of the author and the term would show up. In a check with Google, “private investigation” comes up with 9,780,000 results. We’re not really concerned, because the real number – the competition – is in those pages with the keyword in the title.

Titles

This is the real competition; 346,000 pages have the keyword in the title. Most will have either the keyword in the description, in the URL or both. Out of our chosen terms, this seems to be the term with the highest amount of competition. We now need to find out the quality of the competition, and we base this off the first and second SERPs position.

Links for #1 and #2 Results

When the competition report talks about links, it talks about the links going to just that page. According to WebCEO, the #1 ranking page (not website), has 37 links going to it. 37 other pages on the Web link to this one. They could be from other pages on the site, but they could also be from other important sites. Without link research, we’re just guessing – i.e. researching to find out exactly who is linking to the page. The #2 ranking page has 186 links going to it.

Traffic Rank:

The traffic rank is based on Alexa.com statistics. Alexa runs their numbers backwards. For example, a site with an Alexa rating of 7 is in a much stronger position than one with a rating of 1,000,000. So, in this case, the first site should be easier to beat than the first (if based on traffic rank alone).

PageRank:

PageRank is somewhat self-explanatory. However, as you can see, higher PR does not necessarily mean higher ranking.

Delving into Keywords

Based on just the keyword analysis, private investigator is a term worth pinpointing, as are “private detective” and “private eye”. Consider that the search engines work on relevance, not just a single search term. Placement in this competitive field will be tough, but it isn’t impossible.

Using terms relevant to private investigation can also help your placement. It doesn’t always have to say “private investigator” in the title. You might write about private investigation services and use the term “investigations” a couple of times.

The position you’re in is one of being between the rock and the hard place. Any term you target will have some serious competition. Geo-targeting will bring the numbers down a little, but the competition will still be tough. Basically, you’re going to have to build a big balloon that says “Private Investigator stuff here!” to the search engines.

Now, whether you do that by writing on topics relevant to investigations, such as fraud or surveillance, or by writing particularly about the subject is up to you. The long story short is, you’re going to have to carefully look at the competition, see what they’ve done and try to figure out how you can do it better.

Using Geo-Targeted Terms:

I wouldn’t use them in the titles of every post. Since private investigation laws change from state to state, however, any information you write would be specific to your area anyway. Because they may not fit another area, you should have the geo-terms in the content somewhere.

If you set a tag line to your post title for something like (just an example) “New York’s Private Investigator”, you’ll already have the two main words you want to target, and it’ll be in the search engine title of every post. It’s a thought, and something I might try if it was my campaign.

Special Issues You May Run In To

For many of the terms in the example, Wikipedia.org and government sites are the main competition. Frankly, they’re often hard to beat out of first place. Despite it being considered as a poor resource, Wikipedia is one of the most often referenced sites on the Web.

You have two choices: try to beat them out or try to join them (and any linking neighborhoods) by getting a link. For government sites, you had better have everything in tiptop shape.

The other thing to remember, before you get discouraged, is that most people looking on Wikipedia or government sites aren’t looking to hire a service. These are informational sites and very seldom sell anything – if they ever do.

Although there’s a lot more that goes into keyword research, hopefully this will help you understand a little bit more about the competition and how to decide which keywords will bring the best value.

The World according to Google

“Search engine update” can mean an infrastructure overhaul, indexing changes, user interface changes – even minor tweaks. Some updates don’t affect rankings at all, while other updates call for mad scrambling before rankings plummet.

Google Instant, however, is a whole other animal, and it made “instant” waves in the SEM and SEO world. Currently, there are over 4.2 million pages available to learn about, talk about, bitch about or laugh about this interesting little change in how the Big Daddy Search Engine of them all has “changed lives”. Although we’ve never done a mashup, it seemed like a good time to start.

Is Google Evolving Too Quickly? Peter Young asks this question, pointing out that Google may be pushing one too many changes on the user. I didn’t realize it until I read the article, but Google has pushed out 9 rather big changes over the past three months. Interesting read for those who wonder if the SE is overdoing it.

In My Knee Jerk Reactions to Google Instant, Christina Keffer of LunaMetrics has some interesting thoughts about whether the longtail or short tail key terms will be affected. The article is a good exploration of potential changes in how SEOs set up campaigns. The comments are worth reading as well.

Whether or not Google Instant kills long tail traffic is still a matter up for debate, testing and data analysis, but David Iwanow has an interesting post over at Search Engine People: Google Instant AdWords Trouble. If David is correct in his thinking (and he goes pretty in depth, so he may very well be), companies using AdWords for long tail terms are going to have to rethink their strategies.

An article over at SEOChat nicely covers the issues. Google Instant Changes the SEO Game sums it up pretty well with, “In short, nothing has changed – but everything has changed.” Terri Wells does a good job of covering all the basics without taking an actual stand. Why is “no stand” a good thing? Because nobody actually knows how search will be affected – yet.

Dave Davies has an excellent article on Web Pro News, named simply Google Instant and SEO. However, there’s nothing simple about it. Quite simply, this is an in depth discussion, well thought out, and covers the searcher, Google and SEO perspective. A must read.

And a few others on the side…

For everything that Google does, there are those for and against. The two I like the most, although there are thousands out there for both sides:

Google Instant an Instant Headache for SEO Jockeys and Parents, provided by Techno Buffalo – Definitely against, but then, the author (Leslie Posten) is a daily researcher on the Internet.

In An Instant, Google Reminds Us That It Is Still Awesome, provided by Business Insider SAI – Definitely for, this article is a glowing “review” of how one user received Google Instant. It’s important for optimizers to remember that both sides exist, so we can better optimize for each.

Lastly…

Because I’ve always loved mashups (at least on subjects I’m interested in), and because it feels like a continuation of this post, I felt the need to add Google Instant Instantly Makes Waves Around the Web. aimClear provides 62 recently published posts out of the millions, covering user field guides, tutorials, commentary on and affects of Google’s newest update.

Enjoy!

Related articles by Zemanta

• New White Paper Analyzes Impact of Google Instant on SEM and SEO (thesearchagents.com)
• How Do You Feel About Google Instant? [Google] (gizmodo.com)
• 40 Google Instant SEO, SEM & Analytics Resources (seoptimise.com)

Tweeking & Testing

Bad SEO – the examples are everywhere. If you’ve never seen it, you don’t know what to look for. It really is everywhere. For those trying to do their own SEO, the main reasons it’s done badly, it seems is a) lack of more information and b) everything is done in fits and starts.

Bad Linking

Now, it’s very seldom that a website will rank well in the SERPs without doing anything. However, SEO beginners get out there, read an article that says, “You want to have some sort of link building campaign and website tweaks to help your ranking.”

Unfortunately, many look at this statement and go, “well, if a few links will help, what will a lot of links do?” They haven’t read enough, learned enough, tested enough to know that there’s a possibility of too many links, too quickly, can hurt rankings rather than help them.

Over Using Key Terms

Another common error of SEO beginners is keyword stuffing. People see an article talking about keywords in the content. What happens next can be time-consuming to clean up and painful to see.

The stuffing bug grabs them. Yes, key terms are in all the right places. However, they assume jamming more keywords in these places will do better than creative placement of a few keywords. You get titles like “keyword, KEYWORD, extra word, Keyword”. It’s ugly, it’s unnatural and it can cause your conversions (if not your rankings) to tank.

Unhelpful Code

Frames are another problem with SEO. Frames are used by web developers that don’t understand how SEO and search engines work, for the most part. These annoying pieces of code bring one web page into another. To the search engines, it just looks like one page. If all your content is in the frame, it looks like a page with no content. Not a good thing in terms of ranking.

Included in the coding issue is javascript. This coding language can do many neat things, granted. However, too often people end up with tons of javascript in the head; search engines don’t like this, so you have to fight back with optimized content. Otherwise, try to keep the javascript at a minimum.

Over-tweaking Content

Are you spastic about your content? Do you expect your pages to be perfect? Are you constantly changing what they say and how they say it? This is yet another issue for SEO and site owners. When you make a sweeping rewrite of a page, you basically reset the page’s age. This makes it much harder to develop authority in the “eyes” of the SEs. Hint: you want to develop authority.

The above are just a few ways SEO can go wrong. The largest thing missing in all of this is “testing, testing, testing”. We push testing a lot, and there’s a reason.

Look. You can read tons of SEO blogs and articles; they may be full of great advice. However, you can’t assume what they say will work for your website. You can’t assume millions of links (by this I mean gaining these links through a two-month link building campaign) will help your site. You can’t assume a wide range of key terms or a few targeted keywords will be better.

What you can assume is your site’s uniqueness. Test your ideas before you implement them site wide. Start with a non-performing page; try to bring up its visibility. When you find what works, test the next page up. SEO is a constant process of tweaking, testing and implementing. For your business, you can’t afford to jump into the water without testing it first.

SEO Myths

Writing about SEO isn’t easy, especially when there are so many different views of optimization; “views” includes some of the awful shenanigans being passed off as… drum roll please… the all mighty Search Engine Optimization.

It’s almost the end of 2010. What used to be myths have been tried and tested. They failed. Many are just plain lies now. I’m sure many of you have seen the spammy emails… We get at least ten a week, and anywhere from three to ten SEO sales calls per month. To them, I say, at least research the people you’re contacting will you?

So it’s not easy to learn about SEO. I get that; it’s constantly changing. How can you learn about something that’s so elusive? You read, listen, test and, ultimately, make mistakes that teach you a thing or two. However, the biggest thing to walk away with from any information on SEO is that Content + Links + Activity equal PERPETUAL ACTIVITY. Fresh content, strong links and human activity will get you results.

Spam is the worst enemy of the search engines. Because there’s so much of it, most engines will continue to update their algorithms in order to fight an uphill battle. You have to grow and change with the search engines to get the reach you need.

With that in mind, let’s discuss some of the things “everyone” believes about SEO.

• Getting free Google traffic is a complex process. It takes tons of time, manual labor and infinite patience. You’d have to be a Buddhist monk for this kind of work.

• Google’s algorithms can’t possibly be understood by anyone short of God – and even he has problems.

• Google ranking is better left to those who spend ten hours a day researching and studying optimization. Ranking on your own is beyond your ability.

Now, it may be over simplistic, but SEO falls into three areas: content, links and activity. What’s on your site, who’s linking to your site (and who are you linking to), and what kind of activity is happening.

SEO Myths

As you step into the world of DIY SEO, keep these things in mind. Likewise, remember the following list of SEO myths. They aren’t true. Period.

Proper headings can get your page ranked…

Getting high rankings doesn’t depend on your use of headings. Do proper headings help? Yes – especially for readers. However, if you just have your headings done, but don’t do anything else, your rankings will tank. You can trust me or test it, but if you test it, please do yourself a favor. Test it on an insignificant page.

Submit your URL to thousands of search engines for better ranking…

Search engines don’t need your input. They don’t need you to go to their site, put in your URL and tell them the site is there. They’ll get around to indexing your site on their own. In fact, listing with the search engines can actually slow the process. A better use of your time is to be listed on a few popular, relevant sites.

Optimize for one keyword per page…

This is a waste of space and can ruin your content quality. Think about it. If you’re only using one keyword, your content will look spammy.

Instead, you choose your keyword or phrase and then choose supporting phrases. We’ve found for us that three to five key terms per page have the best effect. The number one point to take away from this is “supporting” terms. Target the phrases you can, so that page can be found for several searches rather than just one term.

Again, test a page on your site. Optimize for a high number of keywords and watch the results. Cut down on the number of key terms until you get strong, relevant results. Testing each page this way may seem tedious, but your site will do much better in the SERPs.

Search engine is a way to trick the search engines…

Listen. If you’re tricking the search engines, then you’re also tricking your visitors. If you’re tricking your visitors, they won’t convert. True SEO is relevant content, quality backlinks and a busy site.

SEO can get your site banned…

Believe it or not, this is “somewhat” of a myth as well. Careful SEO won’t get your site banned. It’s only when your site sets up red “spam” flags that it becomes a worry.

You don’t need SEO…

This is one of my favorite ones; I argue about it with my editor. The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a niche market or not. Consider how many millions use search engines. Even if you get conversions from other areas, not targeting search engines can lose thousands of visitors and potential customers.

There’s no cookie-cutter method to learning SEO. The Internet is so fluid; what worked yesterday may not work today. This is one of the biggest reasons we constantly pushing testing. How do you know something will or will not work if you don’t test it first?

Don’t just look at an article and put things into action throughout your site. Try what you read on a page, first. If it works, great, try it on another page. Three times is the charm, as they say. However, if you haven’t tested before site-wide implementation, you may very well end up watching your website crash and burn.

In conclusion please, stop your nonsense if you don’t know something don’t spew what you have heard others say. Read from the experts, don’t be afraid to ask questions after all we are here to answer them.

Every time Google gets a wild hair and decides to change something about their search engine, it’s like a green flag for negative posts about SEO. The laughs just roll in:

• SEO is dead
• SEO is cheating
• How I got screwed by SEO

As an SEO, I can honestly say it irks me, to put it mildly. Not because these posts down an industry I’m proud to be a part of – I have a thicker skin than that –, but because of all the hours we have to put in… again. The countless hours where we assure clients that their money and our efforts aren’t being wasted… again. Hours of talking on the phone, explaining that, no, SEO isn’t dead, when we could be doing what we are paid for… again.

Rather than spend countless more hours doing the same after the Google Instant update, I figured I’d just write it all out, right here, where everybody can see it. I’ll even address one issue at a time. If it hits a chord with you, bookmark it; after the next update, you can refer back to it.

SEO is dead

For the last time, SEO isn’t dead. Just like the Internet, SEO is a constantly changing, fluid industry. When search engines change things up, so do optimizers. You change your content output rate or how you do link building; you test your pages and tweak your campaign. What you do NOT do, however, is cry “foul” when the SEs do something you weren’t expecting.

You’re not going to know how to address all changes as soon as they happen – but that’s why we’re SEOs. We stand on the front line, dig into the possibilities and then test, test, test.

Now, I understand knee-jerk reactions. When I saw the first instance of Google Instant, I admit I was nervous. Gabriella and I watched the conference, discussing what it meant for us and for our clients. However, we didn’t just blurt out how we initially felt. We figured out the possibilities and then took a tentative stand – tentative, because it’s going to take a little testing to see what it really does. We didn’t go yelling out our worries, though. Why not?

Maybe some optimizers have missed it, but we have an obligation. Site owners look to us (as in SEO companies) to ease their fears, explain what changes mean and assure them we’re on top of it. Period. We do NOT go around yelling, “SEO is dead” every time a search engine company blows their nose or scratches a proverbial ear.

For those of you who are site owners, the past year’s updates will mean changes to the traffic on your website. Whether those changes are good or bad depends on how your site and SEO campaign has been managed up to this point. The important thing to do is not panic. Watch what your analytics data says, test your pages and find out what works to keep you above the fray. As long as you’re willing to adapt, your site traffic will even out again.

SEO is cheating

This sentiment normally comes from those who believe SEO is simply manipulating the search engines. Somehow, optimizers managed to dig through the countless numbers of Google/Bing patents and algorithms. Somehow, we’ve figured out how to actually change (i.e. manipulate) how those unbelievably massive, complex search engines read our clients’ sites – like somehow we have the magic key to giving clients an unfair advantage in ranking.

Bull, and may I politely add “crap”. If SEO is manipulating search engines, then copywriting is manipulating marketing. Nobody says copywriting gives marketing an unfair advantage, yet SEO is constantly ridiculed.

Let me make this perfectly clear. SEO is not search engine manipulation. In fact, if you have the time and dedication, you can do some of your own SEO simply by following Google’s Best Practice guidelines. What about things like cloaking? In many cases of what’s loosely called black hat, the search engines aren’t being manipulated, the visitor is. Do I agree with it? Do I like it? No, but then, that’s why we at Level343 don’t do those things. Hint: MOST optimizers opt not to use black hat techniques.

Lastly on this point, when a copywriter does a good job and brings in conversions for a business, do you yell at them when you find out? Do you say it’s “unfair manipulation”? No, you find out who they are and go hire them yourself. The same should be said of optimizers.

How I got screwed by SEO

If you’re writing a post about how you “tried SEO” and found out it was all a scam, I want to see the name of the company who scammed you and the price you paid. Why? Because a large number of people writing posts like this did one of two things: a) did it themselves and took the wrong advice or b) went for cheap instead of good. Not all, but many fell for the “$29.99 SEO a month” line.

Less money doesn’t mean the best deal. Time is money, money is time and SEO is time intensive. There are very few instances I can think of where a legitimate optimizer would provide services at this rate, and those instances are very rare.

Instead of kicking my industry in general, share the details of the company. Not all used car salespeople sell lemons; most have tons of happy customers who know they got a good deal. Some snake oil salespeople really do sell… well, snake oil. Not all big corporations are out to screw the little guy. My point? Not every optimizer is a scam artist. In fact, most of us are just like you: hard-working business people just trying to make a living in any ethical, legitimate way we can.

So – before the next search engine update, whether it’s Google, Bing or XYZ, I kindly ask those writing posts like the above to stop knocking my industry. I’m proud of my industry. I love what I do, its intricate challenges and, yes, even all the number crunching. SEO has been around for over 20 years, and it’s still hanging in there. Let’s not call the funeral parlor and bury it just yet, m’kay?

Now, in the SEO industry, Google Web Analytics is a touchy subject. So, for those in the industry who feel the need to yell and rant because I’m adding “Google” to the title, yell on, while I talk to the target audience.

Because, you see, GA is a free analytics platform. Thus, it’s widely used by many business owners small and large. As well, tons of SEO tools incorporate with Google Analytics, such as Raven Tools – a product I’m testing now. While you can use the analytics program offered with most web hosting platforms, many find it hard to read the raw data. Thus, GA – nuff’ said.

How do you use Google Analytics, though? How accurate is it? What can it tell you?

Well, GA can give you tons of useful information. The information isn’t completely accurate, but it’s accurate enough to pinpoint what pages need help in terms of conversions. It can help you find out what types of referrals bring you the most bangs for your buck (which also helps you develop a more targeted link building campaign). It’s not the Holy Grail of site statistics and SEO, but it’ll definitely do in a pinch.

Part 1: Understanding Keyword Reports

GA shows your traffic in an overview and in a format broken down into forms of traffic. “Keywords” is one of these metrics. The image below shows a small excerpt of our keyword data metrics for the Article Archive. What we want to know when looking at this metric is:

• What key terms are bringing people to the site?
• How long do they stay?
• Does the content keep them looking around the site?
• Are they new or returning visitors?

Now, keep in mind these are simple metrics; this is not an advanced Google Analytics course, merely an overview. You can click on the image for a larger view. I did skew the report to show no bounce rate, but our bounce rate is our business :).

What are you looking at?

• Column 1: Which terms people have used to find our site
• Column 2: Which page they landed on when clicking through from the SERPS
• Column 3: How many visitors came in from the key term
• Column 4: The average amount of pages looked at from those brought in through the key term
• Column 5: The average length of time they stayed
• Column 6: Percentage of unique visitors
• Column 7: Bounce rate

Quiz Question: Which column is least important? I’ll tell you the answer in a minute.

Let’s pretend that the site is new and these are the only key term hits we’ve received. Now, we have reason to be happy, because we’re starting to show up for relevant key terms: relevant to our site and our business. For instance, “SEO my site” and “reputation SEO” are good ones.

So let’s ay we’re looking at a site and not a blog. I’m going to break down what we’re looking at and how we beginning choosing what to test/tweak.

First, we look at relevant terms:

1. How to SEO my website
2. SEO my site
3. Reputation SEO
4. Reverse SEO
5. SEO and online reputation management

1: How to SEO my website

For this month, we had three brand new visitors land on a relevant page for the term. This is good. However, we need to know if they found the information they wanted there. The statistics of 10 seconds says we didn’t grab their interest enough. They stayed to scan the information, but didn’t find it interesting enough to look around the site.

Because of the search term, we can “almost” assume they were looking for enough information to do it themselves. Although these visitors might convert, it’s not likely.

2. SEO my site

We have the same statistics. The difference here is that the possibility of conversion is more likely. In other words, they may be looking for someone to provide SEO, rather than information on how to do it themselves.

Because they only scanned and didn’t look further into the site, we can safely assume we didn’t grab their attention enough. At some point in the game, we missed the ball on conversion. So, I’m going to set that aside as a page to analyze, tweak and test.

3 & 4: Reputation SEO, Reverse SEO

This is excellent, or could be. Four new people used these phrases to find us and landed on an appropriate page. They didn’t just scan; they looked around at other pages on the site. Did they convert? They could have. I’ll put these aside also, to get more information.

5: SEO and online reputation

Of the two visitors from this key term, one was new, one returned. Neither went further on the site, but they stayed awhile. What do we learn from this? They found the information they wanted. Period. They weren’t looking for anything else. However, I’m still going to look at the page. It’s getting traffic from several search terms, and may or may not be getting conversions. I need to know what’s going on with that page and how I can better convert those visitors.

Quiz Answer: Bounce Rate is the least important metric.

Why? The bounce rate says, “this visitor came, went and didn’t stay long enough to really look at anything.” Seems like it’d be extremely important, right? However, here is one of Google Analytics’ faults.

Google has an insanely high amount of time someone has to stay on a page for it not to count as a bounce. How long does it take you to scan a page for information and grab a number? 10 secs? 15 secs?

On blogs, for instance, bounce rates can be extremely high. People visit to find specific information. They scan, for the most part, garner what they want to know and then leave. The bounce rate doesn’t say whether they:

• Called a number
• Grabbed an email address
• Followed on Twitter
• Bookmarked the site for visiting later

In other words, the bounce rate is just a number that, while somewhat useful, isn’t one you should put a lot of emphasis on.

I had planned to delve into several metrics, but you’d have a book to read. I hope this information has given you the beginnings of how to use Google Analytics for better SEO and conversions.

As we move forward over the next couple of months, Level343 and the Article Archive will be focusing on putting out more helpful, informational articles. If you have questions you’d like to see answered in an article, please feel free to drop one in the comments.

So you have all this data sitting in front of you. Are you confused as to how it falls together? Are you looking for the magic numbers to turn your site into the Holy Grail of conversions? You aren’t the only one.

Web analytics aren’t just numbers, however. They can help you identify trends in traffic and key terms, which landing pages need to be better optimized, and which content needs to be modified.

Out of all the statistics available, though, some are more important than others are. Learning how to read these figures can make a huge difference in the success of your SEO campaign and, ultimately, your online business.

Keyword Metrics

Most analytic reports include keyword statistics, outlining which terms your visitors used to find the site in the SERPs. By paying attention to those terms, you can learn whether your site is as targeted as you think it is.

For instance, one of our key terms people use to find the Article Archive is still “the little agency that could” from the alt tag of an image – in a post over four months old. Why people are searching for this term, I have no idea, but it’s definitely not targeted.

Watch what key terms bring people to your site. If they don’t match your website’s main theme, you didn’t meet your optimization efforts.

Popular Content

Which articles and pages draw the most attention is also a vital bit of information. Those with the most visitors and the highest amount of time on the page can help you figure out which pages are the most important. Not to you, but to your visitors. In short, this information can help you identify visitor trends.

Length/Depth of Visit

How long did they stay? Where did they go? These two questions are answered by the visit’s length and depth. Neither number should be small. If you have an average of 8 seconds per visit with an average of one page per visitor, your site isn’t converting very well. Your content is failing to be interesting enough for people to explore your site further.

Traffic Sources

Which sources of traffic bring the most visitors? Which bring the most conversions? This metric shows information on search engines, social media, referring sites and more. Learning how to measure which methods of traffic bring you the best conversions can make a lot of difference in your success. As well, it can cut down on the amount of time you spend putting together link building campaigns that don’t bring results.

Pay attention to what kind of information is on the referring site. What type of site is it? How many visitors do they get? By comparing poor referring sites with better performing ones, you can develop a much stronger link profile.

In short, web analytics can really help you learn a lot about how your website is performing. They can also give you an idea of how you can better optimize the site to match your visitors’ needs. It may not be what you expected, but, if you listen to the data, put thought into any changes you make and, of course, test, test, test, your changes will get better results every time.

Just Ask Google

We knew it was coming. When Realtime Search showed up, few in the SEO industry were surprised. Some shrugged; others went “yup”. Those who knew better set about developing strategies to capitalize.

Now, when Realtime was just a tagline in the SERPs, it was just one more place to target. Think about it; front-page exposure, even if your site is buried on page 100. Very nice – if, from the optimizer’s standpoint – you can impress upon the client it’s importance.

Well, Google RT Search moved to its own website. While they may have fallen out of the mainstream SERPS for the most part, they’re now front and center on a little Google site known as Realtime. In a search for “interactive agency”, for instance, realtime results didn’t show up in the “Everything” SERPs until page three.

However, searching for the same term in the “Updates” section gives you viable information from real people. It’s not all chatter, either. In the picture below, six posts out of eight are relevant to:

• A competitor of an agency
• Someone looking for a good interactive agency
• An agency

To many, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and other social media sites turn companies into people, the faceless into a face you can like. Searching for SEO is like getting a list “must read” information. “Furniture deals” can get you a ton of information on where the best buy is – and where it isn’t. A search for your company name can tell you exactly what people are saying about you:

So what does all this mean to you? What does it mean for your SEO, business and social media strategy?

You can bet that people will be using Realtime Search to find information, people and products. As you can see, the possibilities and potential reach are various and huge. You can’t afford to pass it up; those who do may be left behind on page 100.

If you’re still sitting there wondering if you should bother with social media, it’s time to get off the fence. Yes, you should “bother” with social media. Yes, because you can’t afford not to. Yes, because it’s a chance for exposure that, depending on your competition, you may never get with SEO alone.

Do yourself and your business a favor. Incorporate social media into your SEO campaign. If you have a marketing team and they haven’t been pushing, it’s time you updated them. Can you use social media to build your business? Yes… but will you?

Search Competition

When doing your own search engine optimization, you can always find plenty of articles on how to research keywords. You can find tons of tools as well, such as WordTracker and the Google keyword tool. What you get is a list of potential keywords, information on how often they’re searched and, basically, whether they’d be a good choice for traffic.

Sounds helpful, useful, informational and all those words ending in the “ul” sound. Now, here’s the question – have you thought about how many others will be using the same optimization methods and tools? When I say “others”, of course, you realize that I mean “millions of others”.

How do you compete and get your website in those precious first slots of the major search engine SERPs? Go for the long tail.

Erm…
Even those who’ve been doing their own SEO for a while may be somewhat clueless when it comes to targeting search terms. You see, you have the basic, garden-variety short tail keyword phrase, like “website design”. Then you have the not-quite-so-common long tail keyword phrase, like “website optimization services for real estate websites”.

About the short tail…
The short tail has one or two keywords, tops. It’s generic, like “shoes” are generic until you start getting into brand names. The short tail doesn’t care whether searchers are buying shoes, selling shoes or just looking at shoes; all it cares about is whether “shoes” is in the search query.

About the long tail…
The long tail has more than two keywords. It’s not generic. It’s long, detailed and accurate to a “t”. It’s a mouthful, but darned if it won’t bring targeted traffic. The really cool thing about the long tail is it doesn’t just care if “website optimization services” is in the search query. It also cares about:

• Website optimization
• Optimization services
• Real estate websites
• Real estate website optimization services
• Real estate website optimization
• Real estate optimization services

In other words, it cares about variations of the search query as well.

Pros and Cons
Both options have pros and cons. For example, the short tail gets more searches than long tail – major pro. However, it’s harder to be ranked high for short tail – major con. Why is long tail easier to rank for? Fewer people are optimizing for them. Period.

So why would you want to go to all the trouble of optimizing for long tailed search queries if they have fewer searches? Two serious reasons:

1. More exposure at the top of the SERPS
2. Searchers are more detailed, which means searches are more targeted

The Two Camps of Searchers
Searchers tend to be either lookers or buyers. Lookers search for free stuff, information, are “just looking” or are bored. You’re going to have to work hard to convert lookers into buyers.

Buyers, however, are looking for a purpose – they already know the product and are there to buy it or they’re performing pre-buying research. Let me be clear: you want these people on your site. Let me also be clear: they tend to use the long tail, because they’ve already defined what they want (Example: Nike golf shoes, size 9, Miami Florida).

Which Keyphrase Type Do You Go For?
That’s easy to answer – both. For example, if your short tail is “website optimization”, you obviously want to rank for it. However, you increase your search exposure if you sit down and think about the end user. If they want to buy, what other words might they add to that short tail? The list you come up with is your list of long tail key phrases. Optimizing for both gives you potential high ranking for numerous searches.

A well thought out keyword strategy containing key words, short tail phrases and long tail phrases will not only have you ranking high, but also will having you ranking high in several places. Take your time; don’t rush. Once you get started, you want to keep the momentum going. Now get out there and make me proud!

Promoting Harmony

I have a secret you may not know. The Article Archive is based on the idea of promoting the Level343 website, gaining more clients and enticing to visitors to engage with us. I mean, we’re a company that actually sells SEO services. We want people to RT our conversations on Twitter, fan us on Facebook, talk about us to others (in a good way, of course) and happily refer us to all their friends without even thinking about it.

It’s a beautiful dream, isn’t it? It’s not just our dream, either. And yet, even those who achieve this dream still complain. They moan, mumble, grumble and whine. Why?

“I can’t get anybody to comment on my blog!”

The amazing thing to me is that commenting seems to be one of the ways you “know” a blog is hip. People drop by and say, “ooo, good point”, or even, “if you say so”, and all of a sudden your blog is “in”.

It Takes Time for the Word to Circulate, But…

Look. I don’t care if you’re staring at a blog you’ve had for four years without a single comment. It takes time. However, if you just posted the articles and figured people would find their way, you figured wrong. IF the purpose of your blog is to build an actual community and create relationships, you have to be the one to start the conversation.

In the process of researching, we’ve come across several blogs that held the potential of being thriving communities. For many, there was an air of expectation and breathless waiting, but crickets chirped in the background. Why? Because nothing was actually happening – yet.

In one in particular, the content was great. After talking to the site owner, I found out that the blog was getting plenty of visitors, but had no comments. It turns out that the site owner never tried to engage – anybody, anywhere. She simply figured that somebody would comment eventually.

You Have to Engage…

Will quality content bring out visitors? Yes. Will it bring out comments? Not necessarily. Quality content will only bring out the initial comments if you manage to write something in just the right tone so the individual feels they simply must respond.

Are you going to do that with keyword stuffed articles? We all know the answer is no, and I’m sure I’ve beaten that topic into the ground often enough. For the sake of those who may never have read here before, let me rinse and repeat. Keyword stuffing doesn’t help your SEO, and it certainly doesn’t help your visitors. It sucks to read, is difficult to understand and doesn’t even entice the reader to try to understand. Don’t do it.

I digress. If you haven’t been lucky enough to hit that tone, you’ll have to take a deep breath, step into the masses and engage. Meet with people online through blog commenting and social networking. Answer questions willingly and freely (it’s the nice thing to do). Don’t spam people (it’s the annoying thing to do). Commit to building relationships instead of numbers (it’s the right thing to do).

Because Visitors Are People Too

It all boils down to the fact that visitors aren’t numbers – I don’t care what your web analyst or optimizer says. Visitors are living, breathing people who like or dislike your writing, blog, personality, services and/or website. They have feelings and are more than willing to share them with anyone and everyone willing to listen – on at least three or more social media sites.

If they don’t like you, don’t know you or feel like you’re a sociopath with no care for the world, doom on you. However, if you manage to create a bridge of information and trust between you and the community you’re building, the people in that community can become your personal cheerleaders.

One Person You Engage…

I’m not kidding; you’d be amazed what the power of one person who really likes and trusts you as a business individual can do for your business. Think about it. If that one person is active in social media and feels like you’re an important part of his or her online world, they’ll start to RT and pass your links around… let’s imagine with a math equation, shall we?

Your personal cheerleader, who is actively engaging in social media, is being followed by 2,000 people. They send out a link from your blog to their 2,000 people. Maybe 10% will look at the link:     2000 * 10% = 200

Let’s say those who open the link average 30 followers each; they forward the link to their Twitter feed. Maybe 5% of those open the link:

2000 * 10% = 200 * 30 = 6,000 * 5% = 300

Now, that 5% also averages 30 followers each and they forward the link. Their followers may not know your cheerleader at all, so maybe 2% open the link:

2000 * 10% = 200 * 30 = 6,000 * 5% = 300 * 30 = 9,000 * 2% = 180

Cheerleader + First Open + Second Open + Third Open = (1 + 200 + 300 + 180) = 680

Can Turn Your Blog Into an Active, Ranking Community

Your one cheerleader brought you 680 visits because they trust and like you. How does that transfer into SEO and better ranking? Bloggers who like you and like your content will blog about you. They might just add a link, write a blurb or write a review. They might mention you in passing: “My friend, Gabriella, over at Level343 (link) told me once…”

As well, they will comment on your blog. All it takes is a few articles with comments on them before more comments will come rolling in. Now, you may not be bombarded, but you will get enough to say, “Yeah, I’m getting comments”.

As you continue to build relationships, you will also build links. The wonderful thing is that these links happen naturally, organically; you don’t have to force them. While it takes time, a few cheerleaders for you and/or your services can turn your blog into a ranking, active community.

Can you do it? Can you engage and encourage others? Can you step into the online community with rings on your fingers and bells on your toes? Yes. Now that these questions have been answered by an expert, it’s time to ask yourself a question: will I?

Code in a Pop by: Darwin Bell

When are you going to wake up, catch up and step into “the now”? “The now” isn’t a fad; it’s not going away. It’s not just an idea grandma came up with in the middle of a late night soap opera.

These aren’t the days of Basic programming, Windows Paint and NCSA Mosaic. Flash is dying, slowly being buried under HTML 5 – don’t argue; it’s happening. Mobile web is shaking desktop browsers. Design programs are exploding with brand new features. Between HTML, XML, CSS, Java, Ruby, Perl and others, there are over ten web programming languages.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are no longer in the safe days of the Commodore 64’s. We’re past the times of IRC or BBSes and delving into the days of Craigslist, instant messenger, graphics to the nth degree and more. Forget about the safe days. Step into “the now”.

Designers, you don’t need to know optimization, but you do need to know user interface! It’s “the now” of web design, and it’s essential to providing your clients with a worthwhile website. If you design beautiful works of professional art, bully for you. However, if those professional works can’t be navigated by the end user, you’re developing wonderful, beautiful pieces of crap that clutter up the Internet.

User interface isn’t an opinion. It isn’t an option. Your clients want those websites for a reason – to convert visitors into paying, reading, engaging, interested, viral consumers. What happens when a visitor can’t find their way around the website because the buttons are all hidden behind beautiful artwork? Boom – epic fail.

Lastly, let me point out that if you don’t know a single thing about creating a website beyond design, you need to start asking the programmer, “Can you do this” or “Can we use this font”. Here’s some news for you. Just because you think Optima looks lovely as a paragraph header, doesn’t mean the visitor will see it. In fact, chances are they won’t. Check out web safe fonts before you go dinkin’ around in the font vault, will you?

Programmers, let me wake you up to a few terms you may not know. Search. Engine. Optimization. Ease of use. Site speed. Clean code. Java includes instead of java scripts. Compression

When you’re turning that gleaming professional design into a shiny new website, keep these things in mind. Clean code and site speed aren’t suggestions. The more useless crap you have on your client’s website, the worse a job you’ve done for them. Don’t be lazy – clean up your leftover code before you go!

-And what’s with the fifty lines of code in the header? Why must you have eight different CSS sheet references? Why can’t you combine them into one file? The same goes for Java script. You don’t have to overload the header. Be kind – combine.

Last, do you like money? Would you like to keep making it? The best way to ensure you keep bringing clients in is by doing that little extra to help them. Take the time to use those header and alt tags. They aren’t there just to annoy you. I promise.